Slave Girls From Beyond Infinity (Ken Dixon, 1987) DVD Review

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“Big Movie. Big production. Big girls.” In space no-one can hear you scream … but there's plenty of hairspray! Let's be honest, can you ever live up to audience expectations with a title like that? Once slammed as “indecent” by a U.S. Senator, Ken (Zombiethon) Dixon's $90,000 VHS-era exploitationer isn't shy about coming forward. A cheap and cheerful sci-fi adventure flick, with a cast who spend most of the movie either in ragged bikinis or skimpy lingerie, Slave Girls From Beyond Infinity isn't aiming for P.C. Plaudits in the slightest – it just wants to give you a fun time. Think along the lines of Sorority House Massacre 2 – and set your expectations accordingly...

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Manborg (Steven Kostanski, 2011) DVD Review...

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“Remember, it's not about the killing, it's about family.” Astron-6, the crazy VHS-loving movie making machines behind the Troma-tastic Father's Day and the much anticipated neo-giallo The Editor, have been cranking out bizarre shorts and features that appeal to the very best of 80s nostalgia for years. 'Lazer Ghosts' and 'Bio-Cops' are one thing, but then there's Manborg – a low-fi large scale action sci-fi chaos-mobile featuring Nazi demons, laser battles, and a home-made future dystopia...

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Satan's Baby Doll (Mario Bianchi, 1982) DVD Review

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“Tender young flesh seduced by the ultimate evil.” / “When the Devil calls, she comes...” Mario Bianchi, here credited as Alan W. Cools, directed this lurid film Satan's Baby Doll, sometimes known in America as 'A Girl For Satan', mixing pornographic pleasure with possession and pain. Within the confines of the Aguilar castle, a lushly decorated tomb resting high upon an emerald hill (the same exterior in Antonio Margheriti's Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye), the forces of evil are about to sink their teeth into some delicious revenge.

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Hard To Die AKA Sorority House Massacre 3 (Jim Wynorski 1990) Review

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“They may have killed his body, but he swore his spirit would never die.” Produced in the same year directly after Sorority House Massacre 2, with much of the same cast and crew involved, Hard To Die: Sorority House Massacre 3 (minus the sorority house aspect) – otherwise known as Tower of Terror – is kind of like Die Hard, but with beautiful women in lingerie.

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Sorority House Massacre 2 (Jim Wynorski 1990) Review

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“It's Cleavage vs Cleavers and the result is Delta Delta Deadly!” In 1986 Carol Frank wrote and directed Sorority House Massacre, a thinly-veiled rip-off of John Carpenter's Halloween (much like many of the slasher films of the decade), and while several franchises were pumping out annual sequels, it wasn't until 1990 that SHM would become a series. Moving away from copycat stalk-and-slash hijinks, SHM2, subtitled 'Nighty Nightmare', was a saucy direct-to-video dose self awareness that favoured knowing winks to the audience as often as it lingered on the nubile young bodies of the gorgeous cast … in other words, exactly the kind of VHS rental any teenage boy in the 1990s would have sought out with wide-eyes.

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The Black Belly of the Tarantula (Paolo Cavara, 1971) Review

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“With needles dipped in deadly venom the victims are paralysed – so they must lie awake and watch themselves die!” During the 1970s, Italian silver screens were crammed full with giallo films; lurid murder mysteries that combined achingly beautiful visuals with sharp shocks and jagged social commentary, and it was in The Black Belly of the Tarantula that perhaps the most original Modus Operandi in the history of gialli was exhibited.

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Seven Blood-Stained Orchids (Umberto Lenzi, 1972) Review

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“Let's make a hypothesis – two dead girls and a single killer.” Umberto Lenzi (Eyeball, Oasis of Fear) traditionally kicks off his films with a quick-firing few minutes to get the audience's pulse racing, and Seven Blood-Stained Orchids is no different. A black-gloved killer driving through the night accompanied by composer Riz Ortolani's laid-back grooves, the ever-present flick knife gleaming in the moon light, a home invasion, and then the savage bludgeoning of a prostitute – Lenzi isn't one for hanging around during his opening act.

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Maniac (Franck Khalfoun, 2013) Review

In the last decade there has been a veritable monsoon of horror movie remakes, and while familiar names both large and small underwent the 're-imagining' process (to widely varying degrees of success), William Lustig's notoriously nasty Maniac (1980), slid under the radar – until now.

“Leave her alone!” Written and produced by Alexandre Aja and Gregory Levasseur (worthwhile remakes of The Hills Have Eyes in 2006, and Piranha in 2010), with Lustig on-board, and Franck Khalfoun (the utterly dreadful and menace-free P2) in the Director's chair, it was a real toss-up how this one could turn out. Would it be a pointless exercise in thoughtless money-making (akin to A Nightmare on Elm Street 2010), or would it be a fresh and worthy new spin on familiar material that is held dear as a dark and sinister example of the slasher genre at its best?

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