Death Row Diner (B. Dennis Wood, 1988) Review

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“Smash their skulls, chop off their heads, it's all the same.” What does a 'straight project' from a guy who has made a long career for himself in pornographic movies look like? Perhaps it's some sappy drama about unrequited love, or a half-baked polemic masquerading as art, or just maybe it's a shot-on-video schlock horror comedy where a ping pong paddle is put to eye-popping use?...

 

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Dial Help (Ruggero Deodato, 1988) Review

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“I'm expecting an important call – a call that never comes.” Directed by Ruggero Deodato, the rogue journeyman filmmaker behind the notorious video nasty Cannibal Holocaust, this is, put simply, a movie about killer telephones jealously menacing a fashion model – why would you need a longer introduction than that?...

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Picasso Trigger (Andy Sidaris, 1988) Review

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“As long as someone's selling tickets, my tail is shaking.” Following on from the giddy heights of the utterly bonkers Hard Ticket To Hawaii (1987), writer/director Andy Sidaris had found the right kind of groove to establish his 'L.E.T.H.A.L. Ladies' series, and so entry number three – Picasso Trigger – sees numerous returning characters, more bared chests than you can shake a boom-erang at, a Martini distillery's worth of cockamamie riffs on James Bond, and an endless supply of exploding vehicles to rival any episode of prime time television in America's Reagan era...

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Nightmare Beach (1988) Mini Review...

What's it about?
The leader of a biker gang is executed for the crime of murder, but when his body goes missing and rowdy Spring Breakers start turning up dead-by-electrocution, the authorities desperately try to keep a lid on things - but the bodies keep piling up.
Who would I recognise in it?
John Saxon, Michael Parks, Lance LeGault.
Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
Directed by Umberto Lenzi (Syndicate Sadists, Eyeball) under a pseudonym, Nightmare Beach was one of his last directorial outings - into which he put little effort (as he himself admitted). Coming in after years of slasher movies, this cheap little killer flick - written by Vittorio Rambaldi (with some rushed rewrites by Umberto Lenzi) - proves to be a rather mixed bag. Indeed, just in terms of acting, the movie comes across rather schizophrenic. The ever-reliable John Saxon (A Nightmare On Elm Street) plays a sheriff doing the dirty bidding of a mayor who's only worry is not scaring off tourists (*ahem* Jaws *ahem*), while Michael Parks (Red State) plays an alcoholic doctor/pathologist/pervert, and Lance LeGault (The A-Team) gleefully hams it up as a Bible-clutching priest - all good stuff, but the rest of the acting on-show ranges wildly from under-sold to reprehensible. Mind you, in a movie like this (ideal VHS rental fodder), that's part of the fun...

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Hell Comes To Frogtown (R.J. Kizer and Donald G. Jackson, 1988) Review

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“Well maybe you oughta try making love to a complete stranger in the middle of a hostile mutant territory and see how you like it!” The 1980s saw (for a time at least) the last terrifying hurrah of the threat posed by global nuclear decimation as slamming a fist upon the red button gave way to deals, draw-downs, and perestroika. At the time, however, the possibility of a radioactive apocalypse was still very real – perhaps as real as it had been since the Cuban Missile Crisis (as detailed in Joe Dante's Matinee) – and as such, the topic was ripe for plundering to form the basis of many genre pictures that did gang busters business on the video rental circuit. With the likes of Creepozoids (David DeCoteau, 1987), the atomic paranoia of the real world painted a bleak future to be expressed on the silver screen – and sometimes that included gun-toting man-sized frog men on the hunt for fertile women, as was the case with Hell Comes To Frogtown...

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Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers (Fred Olen Ray, 1988) Blu-Ray Review

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“What's the matter, chainsaw got your tongue?” Shot in five-and-a-half days over two weekends using borrowed equipment, re-cycled sets, and left over 'short ends' of film stock, Fred Olen Ray's particularly silly comedy horror/film noir spoof Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers – featuring Gunnar 'Leatherface' Hansen as the leader of a buzzsaw-worshipping cult – pretty much does what it says on the tin. Do you want naked ladies of the night hacking up dopey Johns with chainsaws and getting covered in blood? Then step this way...

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Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-o-Rama (David DeCoteau, 1988) Blu-Ray Review

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“Demons murdering your friends? I gotta tell you both, kids – drugs are not the answer.” Hailing from the heyday of the video rental store, when movies like this were hidden away at the back near the infamous beaded curtain and teen boys had few options for titillation if they couldn't find a discarded smut mag on the railway tracks, David (Creepozoids) DeCoteau's goofball cult favourite makes quite an impression. Not only did they make a movie in such a short time (ten days to write, two weeks to shoot), but  Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-o-Rama is still being talked about thirty years on...

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Amsterdamned (Dick Maas, 1988) DVD Review

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“Be glad you're afraid – it means you're still alive.” A slasher thriller version of a Dirty Harry movie by way of the canals and 'red light district' of Holland's capital city, Dick Maas' third film combines elements of bloody European murder mysteries with sardonic American police action flicks. Lurking in the murky depths of Amsterdam's world famous waterways is a crazed killer, in what is one of the most uniquely located killer thrillers ever made...

 

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Phantom of Death (Ruggero Deodato, 1988) DVD Review

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Otherwise known as Off Balance, Ruggero (Cannibal Holocaust, The House on the Edge of the Park) Deodato's vengeance-fuelled thriller, co-written by Vincenzo (New York Ripper) Mannino and Gianfranco Clerici, tells the story of Robert Dominici (Michael York) – a piano virtuoso – whose previously dormant Progeria condition (a disease that ages the victim at an accelerated rate) sends him spiralling into an insane thirst for blood.

At first he seeks to hide his condition from those around him, but soon – as the disease warps his mind – he descends into a cat-and-mouse game of chase with Police Inspector Datti (a typically skewed and bewildered performance from Donald Pleasance, well known for his role as Doctor Loomis in the Halloween franchise), whose obsession at one point drives him onto the streets to scream out “Where are you, bastard?! I kill you!” over and over in front of a passing crowd of perturbed Italians.

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