Real quick — what’s the sleaziest movie you’ve ever seen? Strong arguments can be made for a number of contenders, ranging from Joe D’Amato’s Emanuelle In America and Porno Holocaust to Passolini’s Salo (whoops! That’s an “art” film), but given the common national origin if those entrants, perhaps I should re-phrase the question to read : what’s the sleaziest movie not directed by an Italian that you’ve ever seen? In answer to that, may I humbly submit for your consideration Island Of Death.

Known around the world by various titles ranging from its original, Ta Paidia Tou Diavolou, to Devils In Myknonos, to Island Of Perversion, to A Craving For Lust (and it ended up on Britian’s banned list of “video nasties”no matter what they called it), Greek writer/director Nico Mastorakis freely admits that his main goal with this 1976 production was to outdo Tobe Hooper’s 

A long time ago, in a galaxy not so far away, a little kid named Ed Jr. decided that he’d clean out his father’s guns for him as a birthday surprise. Dad (Ed Sr., as you’ve probably already guessed) was a big game hunter, you see, and had a cabinet full of rifles and shotguns. One of which goes off accidentally when Ed Jr. is messing with it, blows a hole through the door, and, more crucially, blows a hole through mom. Ed Jr., shockingly, grows up to be a normal college kid. Ed Sr. grows into an old and bitter alcoholic serial killer bent on revenge. Their paths are about to cross.

Nope, there’s not much mystery as to “whodunnit” in one-and-done North Carolina-based writer/director Buddy Cooper’s (with a “co-director” credit going to John Douglass) 1984 slasher The Mutilator (also released under the considerably duller title of Fall Break

I may have thrown in the towel in utter disgust as far as The Walking Dead is concerned (in both its television and comic-book iterations), but what can I say? I’m still a sucker for low-budget direct-to-video zombie flicks and probably always will be. I’d first heard mention of Re-Kill, which was being touted as a kind of “action movie set after the zombie apocalypse,” a few years back when it was being filmed on the cheap in Bulgaria (which is also where Steve Miner’s atrocious Day Of The Dead re-make was lensed), but that was about the last I’d given any thought to it until I saw that it was finally released in 2015 as part of After Dark Horror Fest’s 8 Films To Die For package for that year (which I already talk about like it was the distant fucking past or something). “Okay, that’s cool,” I…

In the pseudo-field of cryptozoology, the chupacabra is a creature that’s been moving up the “popularity” ranks in recent years thanks to radio shows like Coast To Coast and, of course, the internet, so I suppose it was only a matter of time before it joined fellow probably- (or should that be possibly-?) mythical monsters like Bigfoot and Nessie on the movie screen. It’s just too bad for the bloodthirsty critter that its cinematic debut comes by way of a thoroughly lackluster un-credited remake.

Okay, that might be a little unfair since director Alastair Ott’s 2014 indie horror Indigenous isn’t exactly a remake, per se, but it borrows so many elements from Neil Marshall’s The Descent — right down to aping its famous “night-vision” scene — that it may as well be. As evidence for the prosecution I offer the fact that this film centers on five immediately unlikable “adventure…

They tell me that the new season of some popular purported “quality drama” is now available on Netflix and that everyone is staying in this weekend to “binge watch” it, but if you’re no more a fan of sleazy soap operas with delusions of grandeur than I am (and really, what is House Of Cards other than Dynasty, with a better cast, transposed from a mansion in Denver to the White House?), you may be looking for something else on there to watch — if so, allow me to humbly recommend the recently-added 2014 Danish supernatural horror/thriller When Animals Dream, an artfully-crafted, beautifully-shot, often harrowing look at a teenage girl going through some serious changes.

I’ve seen some folks comparing this austere film to another Scandinavian genre entry from a few years back, Let The Right One In,  and while on paper that makes sense, please don’t…

Free time has been a scarce commodity in the life of yours truly lately, but when I actually did have a little bit of it the other night, I did something really stupid. I was thinking of heading out to the theater to see The Witch — which I should have done and still need to do — but instead I stayed home, fired up Netflix, and watched the 2015 modestly-budgeted indie horror The Diabolical. Big mistake.

Oh, sure, I’ve seen worse horror flicks than this — if you can even fairly classify this debut effort from director/co-writer (along with Luke Harvin) Alistair Legrand as a “horror flick” — but seldom do you encounter one trying to punch its way up out of its weight class with so little success. The Diabolical takes a heck of a long time to get going, and once it does, the simple fact…