Bruno Mattei was possibly the most shameless rip-off artist in Italian exploitation history (and that’s frankly saying something). As he marched on from making genuinely insane Nunsploitation like THE OTHER HELL (‘81), to nonsensical collages of stolen footage and cheaper filler like CRUEL JAWS (‘95), his craft level edged into the Syfy/Asylum realm of modern trash cinema. MONDO CANNIBAL (‘04) is Mattei remaking CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST (‘80) with green screens, backyard jungle sets, and reels of borrowed clips from the subgenre…

It’s always good to , no matter how perverse his pictures get, Eurosleaze King Jess Franco hails from a background in jazz music (which he often used to help provide his films a soundtrack). Unleashing the exploitation legend in the jungle is a recipe for cacophony, in of visual, sonic, and subgenre mash-ups. His camera drifts over cannibals’ homes; clearly a small forest in Spain that’s been lightly dressed to appear like the Amazon. Stock bird sounds, tribal drum…

"Sleazoid Express" co-author Bill Landis famously labeled the cannibal pictures that became a minor sensation in Italy during the '70s and early '80s - many of which wouldn't hit the American grindhouse circuit until halfway through the latter decade, extended the subgenre's shelf-life - "cannibal vomitorium" films. It's a pretty apt moniker; as these movies really were nothing more than shocking endurance tests, which wanted to turn your stomach with scenes of animal cruelty, primitive sexual rites, plus heinous acts…

With '70s adult cinema, there are instances when you can easily tell that the person who helmed the picture is a scene lifer, based solely on how much more they're interested in emphasizing elements outside of sex. Such is the case with THE PUSSYCAT RANCH ('78) - a giddily silly XXX cowgirl comedy - as John Christopher (who churned out twenty-four hardcore titles between '73 - '84) tosses broad, gong-scored gags with a near ZAZ sensibility. Billy the Kid (Eric…

One title in a string of "nudie cutie" softcore pictures H.G. Lewis made for producer Thomas Dowd (operating here under the moniker J.H. Wells) - a run that included GOLDILOCKS AND THE THREE BARES ('60) and NATURE'S PLAYMATES ('62) - LINDA & ABILENE ('69) combines half-assed Western ambiance with taboo-pushing provocation. Todd (Kip Marsh) and his sister Abilene (Sharon Matt) are orphans stuck on a ranch together, sexual inexperience beginning to bubble over as they stare at one another's bodies. At…

Rafael Portillo was a South of the Border matinee workman, cobbling together jangly little slices of schlock in order to make a buck or two at dive theaters around Mexico City. Pictures like THE AZTEC MUMMY AGAINST THE HUMANOID ROBOT ('58) and FACE OF THE SCREAMING WEREWOLF ('64) - for the latter of which he just directed the lycanthrope scenes - are just as chintzy as they sound, but contain a certain level of handcrafted charm that isn't a far…

A damn near Sirkian adaptation of William Inge's eponymous novel, GOOD LUCK, MISS WYCKOFF is a devastating melodrama, playing out like a slow build horror movie where repression is the bloodthirsty monster in the room. The titular '50s Kansas schoolteacher (Anne Heywood) begins to experience menopause at thirty-five, bringing an overwhelming sense of loss to a life already completely bereft of sexual . Her local physician (Robert Vaughn) recommends she see a therapist (Donald Pleasence) in another town, all while…

Far less tawdry than the title implies, TEENAGE SEDUCTRESS unfolds like a lurid TV Movie of the Week, as Sondra Currie - who was twenty-seven when the movie was filmed - plays the titular abandoned teen, leading to an unsavory fixation on and plot for revenge against her father. Through gauzy flashbacks, we learn that her mother taught her that all men are bad, and to never "give it up" to them as she gets older. This boiling pot of…

Following FLESHPOT ON 42ND STREET, Milligan returned to the horror world, churning out what he claimed to be the biggest budgeted production of his career to date ($20,000 - which, rumor has it, mostly went toward his house's mortgage). Yet BLOOD's narrative about the grandson of a werewolf (Allan Berendt) and his vampire wife (Hope Stansbury) setting up shop in a New York suburb (the time period appearing Victorian, but never verbally defined) is actually far less baroque than it…

By every , Milligan may have been a married man at one point - to GUTTER TRASH ('69) actress Candy Hammond - yet he still indulged his own sexual fluidity, often engaging in casual anonymous sex at all-male revues, and was part of a clan of chickenhawks who traded underage boys for sadism sessions, where Andy would abuse the boys before, during, and after sexual intercourse with them. He knew pimps, hookers, was often a john, and even tricked on…

Andy Milligan wasn't just a grindhouse trash auteur, he literally lived and worked in The Deuce, putting enough scratch together in order to shoot his often single location period pieces in Staten Island churches, before inflating the budgets so that low rent distributors would pay him more for his Bolex-lensed gutter creations. According to Bill Landis' "Sleazoid Express", his films often played one of the better theaters in the area - the Lyric, which was sandwiched on either side by…

The SOV pseudo-sequel to Meir Zarchi's rape/revenge scum classic I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE, Donald Farmer strips the original down to nothing more than sexual violence, comeuppance, and then literal law classes where a professor explains why "no jury in the world would convict her!" It's a wild, exploitative misinterpretation of Zarchi's already dubious claims that the first film was a grindhouse act of primitive feminism. There's nothing of real value to be found in this film's murky, under-lit frames,…