Reviews

Back in '83/'84 there were a plethora of sword and sorcery b-movies being made to cash-in on the success of Conan. Needless to say, the Italians got very involved with this and many of their prominent genre directors chipped in with an offering of their own. To that end, the goremeister general himself Lucio Fulci knocked out Conquest. The basis of its story is put forward with a scene on a beach where the dialogue is so inaudible that you are left with no alternative than to just assume that what we are about to see has some point. What in boils down to is a wimpy hero with a magic bow, who teams up with a Conanesque barbarian to battle an evil topless sorceress and her wolf-men minions! To be fair, that really is all you need to know because I don't think coherence was a prominent consideration with this one and, like other movies of its category, it essentially boils down to a journey punctuated regularly with encounters with all manner of ridiculous events. This basic template has ensured that the 80's sword and sorcery movies are one of the most reliably entertaining - they're hardly ever great exactly but their format means they tend to avoid (too much) tedium.

Conquest is both typical and distinctive of its genre. Typical in that the story, characters and setting is thoroughly ten-a-penny but distinctive in that Fulci has made some unusual choices. For one, the look is atypical, with constant foggy landscapes and what can only be described as VaselineVision - while I do commend the attempt to create a fantasy world with this, I am still not convinced it's a very good idea. The second Fulci factor in this one, is the graphic violence, which is WAY more full-on than these films usually go - the highlight of this involves a cavegirl being literally ripped in half, with her entrails poring out! Fulci also delivers unusual moments such as zombies in a swamp and a great underwater scene where dolphins save a chained-up man! The film deviates from usual rules in other ways too, with our heroes nonchalantly and completely unnecessarily killing a poor schmuck minding his own business and then laughing about it, while there is also a finale which involves the death of a major character which was somewhat pleasingly surprising. You've also got regular S&S barbarian girl Sabrina Siani in this one as the sorceress. She spends the whole runtime topless in a g-string and gold-mask, which may sound good on paper but she is such a looker, you kind or wonder why she was stuck having to hide her coupon the whole film! Unfortunately, aside from Sabrina, this was very much too much of a sausage-fest for my liking, with a couple of especially uninteresting male characters leading the charge - they should definitely have swapped one of them out for a hot barbarian girl! Finally, it would be remiss to not acknowledge that this one also benefits from sporting a nice moody synth score from legendary Goblin, Claudio Simonetti.

Overall, this one is definitely required viewing if you appreciate the salacious Conan rip-offs of the 80's and it certainly differentiates itself from the pack in several ways, even if it is(pleasingly) more of the same from this sub-genre.

The discover of a strange giant skull in a Roman archaeological site, leads a group of folks to an immortal giant worm and its snake woman keeper. This British horror-comedy is the work of Ken Russell, a director who could never be accused of being subtle. In this one he adapts Dracula author Bram Stoker's final novel, which by all accounts is very bad indeed. Well, the good news is that its cinematic equivalent is tons of fun.

Russell brings his pleasing over-the-top aesthetic to the table once again. To that end we have psychedelic visions of worm-based Roman decadence and violence, sacrilegious imagery, strange dreams on a jet airliner and an extremely seductive and scantily clad villainess. The latter is played to perfection by Amanda Donohoe, who proves to be the trump card of the entire enterprise. Kitted out in a selection of great outfits, she is the sinister Lady Sylvia Marsh to perfection, with an intoxicating combination of sexiness, humour and sass, all with a delightful English upper-class accent. She plays the clothing-averse vampiresque snake woman who at one point hilariously picks up a hitchhiking boy scout, which needless to say, ends in tears. Acting-wise there are several others putting in good work, such as Hugh Grant, Dynasy's Catherine Oxenberg and future Dr Who Peter Capaldi but there's no question that Donohoe is most certainly the star attraction here.

Russell, of course, brings a lot to the table too and seems mostly in his element when the visuals are at their most provocative and flamboyant. The airplane sequence is a hoot and the Roman flashbacks are full-on, even if the use of green-screen in these is, shall we say, a bit wonky! The film as a whole, definitely doesn't take itself very seriously but it has managed to navigate the tricky path of integrating humour, horror and eroticism very well together. Altogether, there's really quite a lot to like here.

Directed by Milos Forman (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) this is a biopic which charts the rise of Hustler Magazine owner Larry Flynt and his subsequent problems with the law. There's some fine acting in this one, with Woody Harrelson doing good work as the title character and maybe even better Courtney Love putting in a pretty fearless performance as his loose-cannon wife Althea Leisure; Larry Flynt himself appears in a cameo as a judge.

As a biopic, there is extremely little about his pre-porn life, which isn't necessarily a bad thing really as it allows us to just cut to the chase and get on with it. For the first half, it's a pretty involving movie which details Flynt's rise to prominence culminating with the assassination attempt on his life. Things do fall a bit flatter in the second half, mainly due to the film basically becoming a courtroom drama, which is not exactly one of the most dynamic genres of cinema. Still, as a whole, this is a good film which showcases a guy who had a somewhat colourful life.

I remember when this one came out. It wasn't long after the phenomenon that was Trainspotting and so, it seemed like an adaption of another Irvine Welsh book would surely be another surefire winner. As it turned out, that wasn't the case at all and Acid House did surprisingly low key business. It did seem to be a bit of a shame, as despite it not exactly being a stellar screen adaption of Welsh's short story collection, it was still kind of a fun movie to watch, with stories about a jakey God turning a waster into a fly, a psychotic neighbour and soul transferral between a newborn baby and a Hibs Casual. Compared to Trainspotting, the accents were definitely harder, the dialogue more authentically regional and there is a lot of battered and rundown locations from various actual parts of Edinburgh. So, I guess it was maybe a bit of a harder sell in some ways - where Trainspotting presented its story with a lot of cinematic verve, with Acid House we are proper wallowing in the scum quite a bit of the run-time.

The Acid House book was something regularly laugh-a-minute stuff and that certainly hasn't translated so well into the film. There is certainly has lashings of black humour but its counterbalanced by an overall grimness, which works against the humour somewhat. The stories chosen were for the most part sensible, with Granton Star Cause and The Acid House being obvious choices for cinematic treatment, A Soft Touch on the other hand seemed a bit of a misguided selection - its acted well and it relatively faithful to the book but its depressing nature just jars alongside the fantastic reality shenanigans of the other two. Overall, this is a film which is simultaneously a good watch and a very unpleasant watch, with the general grottiness being ramped up to almost comedically awful levels. The characters, for the most part, are genuinely appalling too. Things are moderated somewhat, however, by some surreal touches and a pretty effective soundtrack. Its sure to be a film that many will thoroughly dislike and it is often quite a frustrating adaption of a book full of possibilities but, at the end of the day, it still makes for an entertaining watch, even if it might make you feel a bit sick from time to time.

This Mexican surrealist film is the feature debut of Alejandro Jodorowsky, the director of the later midnight classics, El Topo and The Holy Mountain. This one, he shot at weekends on a much lower budget. It premiered at the 1968 Acapulco Film Festival and was met with outrage, resulting in a bit of a riot seemingly, leading to it being banned in Mexico. Like his other movies, its fairly plotless. The basic story has the two title characters set off on a quest to find the mythical city of Tar. Needless to say, they frequently encounter bizarre characters and situations along the way - it's the anarchic, sacrilegious and wild imagery that this film is really about. It plays out sort of like a road movie fuelled by LSD - along the way we encounter many bizarre sights such as, a man playing a burning piano, orgiastic mud wallowers, (actual) blood sipping, transvestites, the deadly use of bowling balls and an iconic scene where the title characters cover themselves in ink and write each other's names over the walls and each other's bodies. There's a whole lot of other weird things that go on too. It can get a bit boring at times but, on the whole, there is just so much wild imagination at play here that it would be churlish to not be at least a little bit impressed.

Dieter Dengler is another typical subject for a Werner Herzog documentary, i.e. He is a man with an obsession, and that was to fly. Dieter was a child of World War 2 and grew up in the poverty of post-war Germany, which seemingly included eating wallpaper. He immigrated to the USA as a young man and joined the air force. He winded up being sent to the Vietnam War and was shot down over Laos on his first flight, resulting in him being captured by the Viet Cong. He went through various traumas here but winded up dramatically escaping.

Its quite a story this one and like other Herzog films, the protagonist is slightly strange, I mean the very fact we have a German fighting for the Americans in Vietnam is a pretty odd set-up to begin with! The details of Dieter's imprisonment and escape are pretty compelling in their horror and it is a crazy story overall, with his improbable escape giving it a sort of Hollywood ending (it was made into a movie after all). The focus is squarely on the personal, with little in the way of politics or considerations of the rights or wrongs of the war. I think the unbelievable slow-motion footage of the American bombing raids gives some point of alternative consideration though, given that Dieter was a pilot in the air force causing this horrendous carnage. So, you have a film which allows you to both marvel at one man's escape from a hostile enemy, while at the same time see the utter destruction the people on his side were inflicting on the very people who captured him. Its an interesting dynamic and another fascinating character study from Herzog.

This BBC teleplay, written by genre specialist Nigel Kneale has garnered an impressive reputation over the years. Like a lot of the most well-remembered BBC horror, it was initially released as a Christmas ghost story, despite not having any actual festive element. It concerns a group of scientists who purchase a large old Victorian building to be used as a research facility. It turns out the building has a long history of hauntings and exorcisms and almost immediately a ghostly presence is seen and felt. This leads the scientists to wonder if a ghost is in fact a recording stored within stone and so they set about trying to capture this using scientific methods.

The connection between science and the supernatural is the basis for this one. And it does benefit from an eeriness which many of the BBC teleplays of this era seemed to be good at capturing. I have seen this a couple of times now and I can't help feeling a little disappointed though, given the film's reputation, as while it does have some effective atmospheric moments and some interesting horror moments, it also had a few pacing problems and was often a little too shouty and stagey for its own good at times. Worth a watch if you appreciate old BBC horror though.

Familiarity of the original Flash Gordon serials would probably help in fully understanding this one as a spoof. All that being said, the humour in this superhero sex comedy is so basic, I daresay it doesn't really matter very much. After all, this one features one-eyed creatures known as Penisaurauses, rapist robots, a planet called Porno, characters called Dr Flexi Jerkoff and Emperor Wang, an Amazonian lesbian cult, power pasties and a spaceship shaped like a penis. Sophisticated humour this clearly is not. The story has Earth is being bombarded with sex rays from the planet Porno - Flesh Gordon travels there to save the day.

Seemingly there were several hardcore sex scenes shot for this which were removed just before release, which I think we can be thankful for as that would have been sure to have made this daft film worse. In the event its a film which provides enough dumb humour to ensure its simultaneously moronic and quite charming, its chock full of bad acting and, despite copious nudity, is entirely unerotic. It does have to be said though, that there are a couple of stop-motion sequences which were actually rather well done, which indicate that there was a half-decent budget invested in this one. Its overall quite good fun.

This is a pretty solid overview of Jimi Hendrix, which details his life, music and impact. A selection of famous and semi-famous folks give their opinions on the great man along the way. It also states early on that this is going to be narrated by Slash but oddly I can't recall any narration!

Like a lot of people from the classic rock era, it is pretty amazing to think that their time in the spotlight was so brief, given their massive ongoing impact. In Hendrix's case it was a mere four years - I mean from the point-of-view of today, that just takes us back to the pandemic! Things moved so much faster back in the years when rock music was still in its infancy and new musical ideas were being born every other week. Hendrix was clearly a giant in the realm of guitar playing, specifically rock guitar playing and this doc tries its best to illustrate this. There's a bit more of a focus on technical matters than you might normally expect in a music-doc but obviously, given Hendrix's guitar god like status, I guess it makes sense in this case. This stuff can be a bit dry for the more casual viewer such as myself but its more than compensated for by the music clips and details about his life. Worth a watch for those interested in the 60's music scene.

This one is a dry run from the Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker team who a few short years later would give us the all-time comedy classic Airplane! It takes the form of sketch comedy, which you don't really see in movies anymore. Like others in this genre, it's definitely an uneven viewing experience and unsurprisingly given the parodic nature of the thing, a number of the jokes have trouble landing now, given that the material which they are based on is off-its-time and buried in the era. Nevertheless, its very format is one of its chief strengths, given that if one sketch isn't working so well, then another is soon to replace it, ensuring that the pace is good. On that note, I would have to ay that the main weakness with this one for me for sure, was the 'Fistful of Yen' segment, which seems to have a following but, in my view, at 40mins this Bruce Lee parody seriously over-stayed its welcome, especially given that its material was not very strong. The length of this whole section creates an imbalance in the film overall, with every other segment seeming to clock in at no more that 3mins or so.

What you get here is a taste of the absurd and bad taste gags that would make up so much of the likes of Airplane! And The Naked Gun! Series. As I say, its definitely hit and miss but on occasion it can hit a home run, for example the advert for the boardgame Scot Free, which hilariously mines the JFK conspiracies. There are also fun movie parodies of the likes of Cleopatra Jones and Earthquake. Overall, this is certainly a fun, if scattershot bit of comedy.

I think it would be only fair to say that this is a somewhat scattershot documentary. Its bitty and fragmented, with little in the way of a narrative spine. This may be partly due to its genesis, where it was originally intended to be a film about the recording of Mogwai's tenth album and the associated series of small gigs in the Scottish Highlands intended to promote it. This all went to pot with the COVID pandemic but the band carried on and recorded the album which when released was in the unexpected territory of hitting the number one spot in the UK album charts. The doc sort of switches focus to this as the main drama of the film, and while its pretty impressive that an instrumental post-rock band that had been going for quarter of a century were hitting the top spot in the charts, its really only semi-interesting at best. So, the make-up of the film is essentially a sequence of Mogwai-related segments often pretty loosely connected, with a few famous and not-so-famous fans interspersed throughout with their thoughts on the band's music. I thought for a group whose music is so vivid, it might have been a good idea to have a more visual approach which could have accentuated the accompanying music but there wasn't a whole lot of that unfortunately. Funnily enough, the band themselves are almost conspicuous by their absence here, so there's little in the way of a look at their motivations or influences. What you are left with is a quite fragmented film which is more about an impression, rather than an overview. Amongst other things, there's very old clips (you know they're ancient, as Stuart has an impressive barnet!), there's a bit about the young football team they sponsored, clips from the Zidane movie, concert clips of varying quality and the rapper they were involved with in the chart battle driving around in a tank. The overall lack of urgency in the doc does mean that its pretty contemplative in nature, which does tap into the effect of much of the band's music. If you are a fan of the group, it does make for a good watch in a lo-fi sort of way.

Earlier on this year I attended all three nights of 'The Girls Aloud Show' at the Glasgow Hydro, in a section that was named the "Gift Wrapped Kitty Kat VIP Zone" (that's the standing bit encompassed by the stage in case you're wondering!). It was a bit of proper self-indulgence on my part. It cost me a small fortune to do so. It was also worth every penny.

Its only my humble opinion but Girls Aloud are the greatest girl group of all time. During the decade of the 2000's Cheryl, Kimberley, Nadine, Nicola and Sarah unleashed an unprecedented series of glorious singles which should be used in the Oxford English Dictionary as an example defining the noun 'banger'. So, it was with some excitement when they announced a big arena tour of the British Isles in 2024. It had been 11 years since they had last performed and in between times there had been the dreadful passing of Sarah Harding. This terrible event seems to have mended previous animosities between some of the girls and put everything into perspective. In the new shows there is a togetherness which was noticeably missing on the 2013 tour and the concerts were all the better for it, as this music is so effervescent and joyful, it benefits from seeing the performers loving it on stage as well.

In the event, the show that was put together was immaculate, with a setlist close to being perfect, i.e. Its banger central all the way with this one. On previous tours, the girls songs often took the form of medleys, included a disproportionate number of ballads and shared the bill with extended cover sections. This felt like the first show which fully maximised Girls Aloud strengths from start to finish. To that end, this is a set made up of all the mid and up-tempo classic singles and deep-cuts that truly define them as recording artists - the ballads (never the girls strong point) are pleasingly minimised to just two songs. But those two slow tracks are especially poignant and apt on this tour, given that the emotion of them is channelled in the direction of their missing band member. Like the other four members, Sarah was absolutely integral to the group and throughout the show, she is referenced vocally and visually in innovative ways, with the accent on celebration rather than (too much) sadness. It's a difficult thing to pull off but its done with considerable grace, love and artistry.

As a document of this live show, it has to be said that this film is quite excellent. It captures things visually as well as could be realistically expected - the only very minor criticism I could level at it would be that it didn't milk that opening, epic curtain reveal for quite long enough for my liking! But in the final analysis, this concert film showcases perfectly what is a premier division example of a pop show - we have a great group with stage presence, charisma and sex appeal; fantastic staging, which knows that in this context being ridiculous is actively good, its floating plinths to giant dresses by way of flying motorbikes all the way here; and, of course, we have a setlist of highly unique, quite brilliant pop bangers, which have aged like fine wine.

I don't think people fully realised just how loved this group was, until they went away and then came back again. The group and the audience are that bit older, wiser and, if anything, that bit more up for it than before. This concert film is a top class reminder of a great time many of us had with a cherished group of ladies.

The book by Kurt Vonnegut that this is based on is one of the great leftfield sci-fi novels. I say sci-fi but its really an audacious mix of deadly serious historical material with comedy and a sci-fi premise. This film version really is true to the spirit of the book and was praised by Vonnegut himself. If you have never actually read the source material first and go head-long into the movie, I daresay, it might seem more than a little baffling in its unorthodox approach.

The story is a fragmented series of vignettes from the life of a character called Billy Pilgrim, who has come unstuck in time, meaning that without warning he flits between different periods of his life. This includes his experiences in Europe in World War 2 where he becomes a prisoner-of-war and experiences first hand the destruction of the German city of Dresden by the British RAF, he avoids the fire storm which killed 150,000 by ironically being sheltered in an abattoir known as Slaughterhouse-Five. The whole Dresden segment is used to hammer home the evils of war, given that we witness a civilian city of Nazi Germany obliterated, showing that a nation who were committing unspeakable atrocities on a daily basis could still themselves be subject to an atrocity themselves. Other segments have Pilgrim as a middle-aged father in a loveless marriage and, most bizarrely, as a specimen in an alien zoo on the planet Trafalmadore, where he is actively encouraged to mate with a gorgeous film actress, Montana Wildhack. So the film considered the concept of time and the horrors of war, via time-travel, aliens and absurdist comedy. I am not entirely sure, I understand the full point of it all but I sure enjoyed it and appreciated its boldness and originality.

Interest in the sinking of the Titanic has hardly dwindled over the years. This TV doc taps into this further. I daresay, if you are well versed in this subject, that this film will most likely be of limited use but if not, it will offer some bits and pieces of interesting info on the subject. Its certainly a pretty cheap production it has to be said and regularly uses bits from a real-time computer simulation which you can easily access online. Aside from this there are more interesting vintage newsreels and interior photos of the ship. It's a doc which definitely gets over the line, even if it's a bit limited in some ways. What I mainly took out of it was two episodes I knew nothing about - namely, coal bunker fire which raged for days, possibly causing damage to the ship, contributing to the later disaster and the moment that Titanic almost crashed into another ship soon after setting sail! Its stuff like this which ensures this doc is kind of interesting but its most probably going to be of more use to those with more casual knowledge of Titanic, than those will well-versed knowledge.

William Hurt plays a Harvard Professor who believes that past human memories are biologically imbedded and passed on with each generation. He discovers that these memories can be unlocked when a person undergoes sensory deprivation in an isolation tank, while under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs. What he does not bargain for, is the side effect where he undergoes physical changes that turns him intermittently into a primitive man.

There's shades of David Cronenberg in this sci-fi horror film which has one foot firmly in the body horror genre. But the director here is another maverick, namely Ken Russell, so to that end we have his trademark intense, colourful and blasphemous imagery, intertwined with the body horror. Needless to say, this results in a pretty weird concoction at times. But it's the bold visual ideas and general oddness which elevate this one to cult value, as the basic idea of the story isn't especially interesting all on its own. But the imagery at times is very impressive when the trip sequences kick into high gear and its this above all which defines this one and gives it its ongoing interest value.

This American TV movie is about a shy young woman with psychic powers who goes to university, where she is shunned by the top sorority house, who alternately fawn over her outgoing, glamorous half-sister, who they insist joins them. The shy sister joins a rival sorority, which is a haven for outcasts and oddballs. Before long she is the target of bullying from the girls from the snobbish sorority and you can probably guess roughly where the story is headed next.

The above synopsis along with the 1978 release date, should make it pretty obvious that this is a Carrie clone. That Brian De Palma classic really made an impact back in the day and there were several psychic powers horror movies that followed in its wake. This has to be one of the ones which most closely followed the template though, given its setting, central character and bullying theme. Its TV origins do ensure that its considerably less explicit of course and the very fact that the very brief scene involving Morgan Fairchild in a wet t-shirt seemingly caused something of a furore indicates just how chaste American telly was back in those days. But despite the obvious restrictions in content, its still a pretty successful bit of TV horror. The characters are pretty stereotypical but they still get the job done and involve the viewer. The psychic powers element is mostly reserved for the final act and its nothing too impressive really but again, it gets the job done. Overall, this is a pretty solidly enjoyable bit of TV horror, so long as you have realistic expectations.

A further note for horror fanatics - this one features Tisa Farrow as the awkward character Mouse, she would go on to gain some cult cred when she soon after starred in a couple notorious Italian video nasties, the Lucio Fulci gut-muncher Zombie Flesh Eaters and the Joe D'Amato outrage Anthropophagus.

True crime meets Nazi Germany - sounds like a recipe for success as a documentary series? Well, in fairness, it is good TV and well worth watching if you are interested in either of those two topics but it also has to at least be acknowledged that the material isn't always the best fit. The first three episodes certainly fir the remit but the final three are more questionable, with the Witch Elm murder very easily having nothing to do with the Nazis at all, while the Hermann Goering and Rudolph Hess entries most likely not murder mysteries at all! That being said, all the episodes make for interesting viewing. Hitler's bizarre and dark relationship with his niece, highly irregular and corrupt police work in the Bahamas, a psychopath prowling the streets of Berlin at the height of Nazi terror, an unknown woman found in a tree and portraits of high-ranking Nazi officials Goering and Hess. There's a lot to sink your teeth into, even if the title doesn't always fully match the content.

Writer Ira Levin's novels have been notable as a reliable source for some great films, such as Rosemary's Baby and The Stepford Wives. The Boys from Brazil is another pretty good example, even if it doesn't quite match up to those other two earlier examples. Like the then recent movie Marathon Man, this is another thriller which features a central villain who is based around the notorious Dr Josef Mengele, the so-called Angel of Death who conducted filthy experiments on inmates in the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. Unlike Marathon Man, the central character IS Mengele himself, which in a neat role reversal of that film has Laurence Olivier switch from the evil Nazi to the Nazi hunter here, replete with (extremely) over-wrought Jewish accent. By contrast, and perhaps unexpectedly, we have Gregory Peck portraying Mengele in this one.

It all amounts to an entertaining thriller with a sci-fi premise. That premise is of course the idea of neo-Nazis attempting to kick-start the Fourth Reich by creating many clones of Adolf Hitler around the world, in the form of a series of very strange teenage boys. Those mini-Hitlers are played by Jeremy Black in a very memorably obnoxious series of performances. While the sci-fi silliness ensures its not very realistic, its also this angle which gives the movie its main angle, meaning its not just another run-of-the-mill 70's Nazi thriller. Aside from that, there's a memorable tense sequence featuring Dobermans and several cameos involving recognisable actors from TV and film, including Steve Guttenberg once again entirely failing to not be a bit cheesy in a serious role as an undercover activist.

Four people arrive at a seaside mansion, which is the ancestral home of one of the party - a young man who witnessed his father murdering a woman there when he was a child. Various antagonisms exist between the characters and to make matters worse, there is a hefty inheritance at stake - isn't there always?! And will history repeat itself in the form of murder?!! Do you know what, it might just...

This very early giallo owes more to the likes of the French classic Les Diaboliques and Hammer psychological thrillers such as Taste of Fear, than it does Mario Bava's early giallo proto-types, The Girl Who Knew Too Much or Blood and Black Lace. To this end, it doesn't have a maniac on the loose scenario and instead focuses on a small cast, where the central character is so emotionally vulnerable that we are not sure if they are being driven mad or insane to begin with. It's a fairly basic and minimalistic movie in a lot of ways but it does have some visual black and white elegance and nice touches such as the mirrored room. The small cast isn't bad either with future Hannibal and Bond actor Giancarlo Giannini suitably intense as the psychologically damaged son, giallo regular Dominique Boschero a welcome presence once more as his wife, character actor of dozens of side roles Luciano Pigozzi is successfully shifty once again as the lawyer and Mara Maryl (who came up with the idea for the film!) romps about in bikinis as the resident fox. But what may define Libido most of all in giallo terms, is that the most prominent screenwriter of the genre, Ernesto Gastaldi, was given a rare opportunity to direct here. He doesn't do a bad job and the film, while a bit unexciting for the most part, does have a fairly diverting final third where events do ramp up a bit. Its no classic but it's a nice example of a very early Italian thriller.

I seem to think this West German film was one of the early forerunners of violent exploitation cinema. After all, its poster claimed it was 'the first film rated V for violence' and audiences were handed a vomit bag on entry. And to be honest, for 1970, this would quite clearly have inhabited the extreme fringes of cinematic violence. It took obvious influence from the earlier Witchfinder General but moved the material into much more definitive exploitation territory at times. Like that earlier film, the story takes place in unenlightened pre 19th century Europe, at the time of the witch trials. The story focuses on the hypocrisy of the witchfinders, who claim to be carrying out their work in the name of God but whose motivations really stem from sexually inadequacy, greed and sadism. It does consequently have a withering view of the actions of the Church during these times and does have some serious points to make despite its salacious content.

I guess director Michael Armstrong is having his cake and eating it though, as on the one hand, the torture scenes depicted here are grim and ugly and reflect what actually went on in an in-your-face educational kind of way, while on the other hand, this stuff does work wonders as pure exploitation cinema as well. Like a lot of continental period-set horror offerings, the authentic locations and costuming adds massive amounts to the feel and atmosphere of the thing. While the casting is also very good, with Herbert Lom adding weight to his role as the deluded chief witchfinder Lord Cumberland, Reggie Nalder is terrifying as his sexually deviant and scary looking predecessor Albino, Udo Kier elicits great screen presence as the apprentice who slowly begins to understand the evil he is involved in and Olivera Katarina is a sensual and empathetic presence as the woman Vanessa, who is the catalyst for much of the drama. Overall, this is a very strong and effective bit of folk horror, which is admittedly pretty unpleasant and disturbing at times but which stands up well as a more excessive sister film to Witchfinder General.

Following on from the first film in the Decline of Western Civilisation trilogy, which looked at the L. A. punk scene, this second instalment takes a look at metal, specifically the L. A. glam metal scene. Needless to say, there are some pretty obvious differences between the films. The most obvious being that the metal crowd are actively wanting fame and success, which in fairness you can hardly argue with. But there is a general vacuousness about most of the guys interviewed in this doc (I specifically say men because, quite similar to Part 1, the women here for the most part all seem FAR more level-headed and intelligent!). Future Wayne's World director Penelope Spheeris is on hand to actively encourage the stupidity of the participants with her questions, although in order to achieve this she hardly needs the interview skills of Alan Wicker, given that most of these metal-heads offer up banalities free of charge. A lot of the interviewees are guys from 'up-and-coming' bands and their confidence in future success certainly could be described as delusional, albeit they do not have the benefit of hindsight where we all know that two or three years later grunge was on the way leading to instant annihilation in what could be known as the Hair Metal Holocaust. So, in many respects this doc can now be viewed as hanging out with a bunch of people who are about to be catastrophically derailed but who are at present happily unaware of the onrushing disaster.

In amongst the interviews there are a series of live performances, all of which seemed to be terrible bands playing the same song - except for Megadeth whose thrash metal sound did somewhat stick out here like a sore thumb. Several successful artists are interviewed to varying effect, such as the aforementioned Megadeth, Ozzy Osbourne, Poison, Alice Cooper, Aerosmith, Kiss, Lemmy and the not-yet-known Vixen. There are occasional moments of comedy such as the band London epically failing to burn a Soviet flag or the surreal bizarreness of W. A. S. P. guitarist Chris Holmes out of his head on booze in a pool on a floating chair while his mum looks on ambivalently. There's also a super-sleazy old guy in a hat who organises a bikini contest in which several of the hair metal wannabees are the judges. Its overall certainly a mish-mash of stupidities which make up this documentary but then, the hair metal scene of L. A., with its focus on partying, must certainly be in the running to claim the title of the dumbest music genre of all time. While there are moments of manipulation in the editing in this one for sure, it nevertheless is a reasonably revealing look at this rock music scene, however, most people who watch it will understand why it really needed to be wiped out by alternative rock!

Suspicion falls on a man whose third wife dies mysteriously in his swimming pool - after all, his other two previous spouses died in odd circumstances too and he always seems to benefit financially! He escapes prison in a dubious manner and shortly after a mysterious woman pitches up in his swimming pool late one night; he winds up marrying her too. But is she who she says she is? Will she become the fourth victim? And who is that odd woman kicking about in the dead of night?

This Spanish giallo was directed by Eugenio Martin who later helmed the excellent Horror Express. He doesn't deliver a film nearly as entertaining with this one. Not that its bad or anything but the pace is slow and there doesn't seem to be a massive amount happening a lot of the time. Also, given the genre, it has to be said that there's a distinct lack of salacious content to be found here either, which always tends to enliven even the least essential giallo. The star in this one is Carroll Baker who appeared in a raft of similar old school gialli, which were less about maniacs prowling around violently picking off members of the cast and more about jet-setters plotting against one-and-other for large inheritances. This movie is most definitely of the latter category, and consequently does benefit from a certain lushness of presentation, with a pleasingly loungey score from Piero Umiliani and a visually nice look throughout. The character played by Marina Malfatti was probably the most promising overall, as she is an unhinged crazy person with a tenuous grip on reality, i.e. A pleasingly eccentric and ridiculous giallo character! On the whole, this is a solid example of the early style of this type of movie but just be aware that the thrills on offer are less excessive and more of the breezy and laid-back variety.