Recent Entries

• Early 1970's

  by zacharythax March 26, 2013
  GETTING INTO HEAVEN (1970) D/W: Edward L. Montoro More Something Weird stupidness with Uschi Digard who seduces a nerdy nervous cop, romps naked in fields and screws an old guy. "Heaven" in the title is her character's name. Get it? THE NIGHT VISITOR (1971) Max Von Sydow makes a daring escape from a...
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• WOMEN'S PRISON MASSACRE (1982)

  by zacharythax July 26, 2012
  I just saw this in a theater on the big screen in 2012 (!?) Three very Italian-looking tough hussies do a Dadaist theater piece. The butch Albina heckles them, throws tomatoes and starts a big prison brawl. There's lesbian shower scenes (as required by statute 43:3425 of the exploitation code) where...

• THE FRANKENSTEIN FILES: HOW HOLLYWOOD CREATED A MONSTER (1999)

  by zacharythax July 26, 2012
  This 45 minute documentary doesn't have a whole lot of new revelations and seems to have been quickly slapped together to cash in on the release of Gods and Monsters. There are interviews with Sarah Karloff and Dwight Frye's son. If you didn't know about the influence of German expressionism on the ...

• MICKEY ONE (1965)

  by zacharythax July 26, 2012
  It's been called "the best movie Warren Beatty ever starred in." It's a very arty and well done almost surreal crime story about a drunk comedian from Detroit who wakes up and finds out he owes the mob an unspecified but really huge sum of money. He runs, becomes a hobo and ends up in Chicago. In a ...

• THE RAVEN (2012)

  by zacharythax July 18, 2012
  The great John Cusack as Edgar Allen Poe and the plot straight outta Theater of Blood! This doesn't have a whole lot to do with the poem. It's about a serial killer recreating Poe's own stories--"Murders in the Rue Morgue", "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar", "Masque of the Red Death" etc. The B...

• ANIMATED SHORTS OF WALERIAN BOROWCZYCK VOL. 2 (1962-1964)

  by zacharythax July 18, 2012
  As weird as you'd expect--cartoons from the guy who brought us The Beast, Immoral Tales, and Dr. Jeckyll and Miss Osbourne. Some of you out there might be old enough to remember the International Animation Festival with Jean Marsh on PBS. This stuff might have showed up on there in the '70's. The fi...

• SOME GUY WHO KILLS PEOPLE (2011)

  by zacharythax July 15, 2012
  No great shakes low budgeter about a guy (Kevin Corrigan) who works at a humiliating loser job at an ice cream parlor (they make him dress up like an ice cream cone) and has horrifying flashbacks of being tortured by arsehole jocks from high school in abandoned building. He's a also a (very believab...

• WILD HONEY (1972)

  by zacharythax July 15, 2012
  It's a true achievement of director Don Edmunds that he make a movie so chock full of nudity and wierdness and STILL make it so mind-numbingly dull. An OK looking farm girl boffs a motorcycle guy in a barn, then masturbates while an evangelist is preaching on the radio, showing her full 70's bush, w...

• LUNA (1979)

  by zacharythax July 14, 2012
  This had been a holy grail of mine for years. You see, in the 70's a lot of films were just plain hard to see and so you heard things and it ricocheted about in your imagination for months, sometimes years building your visions and expectations up. I think it was on Sneak Previews that I first heard...

• LOCKOUT (2012)

  by zacharythax July 14, 2012
  Great tense humorous action flick...in space! In the near future a cynical, wisecracking tough guy Snow (Guy Pearce) is after the proverbial Mcuffin in an aluminum briefcase. After a spectacular chase scene with a little parkour, helicopters crashing on an urban highway and finally ditching the McGu...

• DARK SHADOWS (2012)

  by zacharythax July 12, 2012
  I think I may have sat through at max 5 minutes of the TV show before I got so bored I switched it off. A lot of critics have slammed this one, but it's got great use of music (though I don't see how the 15 year old daughter Carolyn could have been listening to Iggy and the Stooges' "Sick of You " i...
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• Another Remake Nobody Asked For: SOLARIS (2002)

  by zacharythax July 9, 2012
  WARNING: In case you actually give a fug, this review contains spoilers, not that it matters. The review of the original in the Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film goes like this: "Better than 2001." If I were to make a one-sentence entry on this remake my first impulse would be "More soporific than T...

• WINTER'S BONE (2010)

  by zacharythax July 6, 2012
  THE "FEEL BAD" MOVIE OF THE YEAR! Grim depressing tale of modern day hillbillies in Missouri who have been cooking meth for years and its aftermath. It's has a gritty documentary-like feel with almost no background music. Jennifer (Hunger Games)  Lawrence lives with her catatonic mother and takes ca...
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• SHEITAN (2006) France subtl.

  by zacharythax July 5, 2012
  ON Christmas eve bunch of horny rowdy chavs at a DJ club try to get laid, one of them (Bart) gets samshed in the face with a bottle after being rebuffed by a girl he's hitting on. They get into a tiny car, rob a convenience store of candy and gas (while watching a Santa Claus slasher flick) and take...
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• MYSTERY MEN (1999)

  by zacharythax July 1, 2012
  Although positive reviews abound now on the internet, when it came out I can't remember anyone having anything good to say about this goofy fantasy-comedy about a cadre of superheroes who may or may not have actual superpowers. In a Blade-Runner inspired city the Red Eye gang (led by Artie Lange) br...
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• SPACE PROBE TAURUS (1965) b/w

  by zacharythax June 30, 2012
  I don't recall reading about this in any of the reference books.  In the future year 2000 the USA sends a space probe "beyond earth's universe." to a planet where they land underwater and encounter an incredibly cheezy-looking monster with really long fangs and a thick mohawk. Very talky and claustr...

• BIGFOOT LIVES (2007)

  by zacharythax June 30, 2012
  Most of the running time of this disappointing documentary is filled up with rednecks in camo out in the woods telling stories. Now nobody is more of a believer in the existence of bigfoot than I, but I find it a little disconcerting that in this day and age when everyone is carrying a cell phone wi...

• Leonard Nimoy: Kid Monk Baroni (1952) and Valley of Mystery AKA Disappearance of Flight 603 (1967)

  by zacharythax June 30, 2012
  KID MONK BARONI (1952) Nimoy said in an interview that this film sank at the box office because of the advent of television. Paul "Monk" Baroni is the leader of J.D. gang who gets caught by a kindly, but tough parish priest sawing up a stair railing for firewood. He invites them to train at the chur...

• Boardwalk Empire (2010--)

  by zacharythax June 23, 2012
  If you would have talked to my grandparents when they were alive you would have the impression that they never even THOUGHT about sex. That my grandpa never got drunk in his life, just one night he "had a few too many but that was just once." and that he never smoked a cigarette just one "it wasn't ...

• 8 1/2 (1963)

  by zacharythax June 22, 2012
  The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film doesn't have a lot to say about this aside from the fact that Barbara Steele is in it (looking HOT!) It was shown all the time in college film classes in the early 80's, but I first saw it in a library basement and to me made the first connection between trash a...

• Boom (!) (1968)

  by zacharythax June 22, 2012
  If you've seen Pink Flamingos as many times as I have you can't help but have noticed the poster for this movie in the background in the scenes at the Marble's house (which was John Water's house) He's a huge fan of this film and calls it one of the greatest "failed art films, a genre which does not...

• Bruiser (2000)

  by zacharythax June 22, 2012
  I hate to say it but I'M SICK OF ZOMBIES!!!! It's been done to goddam death by now. As much I am a fan of George Romero's early work, the later films just were indigestible to me.  Now it's zombie-this and zombie-that. The great GM would do well to take a tip from his colleague David Cronenberg and ...

• Vampire Men of the Lost Planet AKA Horror of the Blood Monsters (1970)

  by zacharythax June 17, 2012
  Admittedly, this has been written about elsewhere so I'm just rehashing here. Do NOT attempt to watch this before 2:AM. Then, this movie will cause you to doubt your sanity. By the amazingly inept late great Al Adamson (who I met at a horror convention mere months before he was murdered in his own h...
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• Blue Velvet Deleted Scenes (1986)

  by zacharythax June 17, 2012
  When this came out it was like, "Wow, David Lynch is doing a movie in COLOR!" Whoah! The deleted scenes are good enough that most of them should have stayed in the movie, even though it would have made it 3 hours long (which was de rigour by the mid-90's anyway) There's a blues guy in a bar where Fr...
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• Quante Volte...Quelle Note (4 Times Every Night) (1972)

  by zacharythax June 17, 2012
  Mario Bava doing a sex (ahem) comedy. Not a lotta larfs. The whole thing is like one of those HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER episodes where you get several different people's version of the same story. In this case some douchebag picks up a smokingly hot girl, takes her out to a (pre-disco-era) discotheque a...

• Young Playthings (1972)

  by zacharythax June 14, 2012
  This is the kind of movie that died with the advent of hardcore porn. The late great Joe Sarno made sex movies steeped in psychology and Jungian myth. While actual naughty bits aren't on display (much) there's tons of nudity, bad acting, and weird behavior. He filmed this one on a budget of about $5...

• The Battle of Algiers (1966)

  by zacharythax June 13, 2012
  Serious epic story of Muslims rising up against French colonialists. It's tense, gritty, violent and may have been an influence on Quentin Tarentino decades later. The main character is set up to shoot a policeman, but the gun handed off to him by a woman in a burkah is empty--it was a test of loyal...

• Hot Tub Time Machine (2010)

  by zacharythax June 13, 2012
  Four guys go back to 1986 by some Russian energy drink called Chernobly spilling into the electronic console of a hot tub at a ski resort. Suddenly, everyone's wearing neon colors and Poison is playing. John Cusak says, "I hate this decade...we had Reagan and AIDS" but he hooks up (almost) with a co...
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• Porn is Dead: Long Live Something Weird

  by zacharythax June 10, 2012
  If you've ever read the incredibly influential ReSearch book Incredibly Strange Films Jim Morton states "The advent of explicit pornography...was the death knell for sexploitation. Filmmakers who had previously invented unusual plots  and situations to showcase their non-anatomically-graphic sex fou...

• The Unholy Garden (1931)

  by zacharythax June 8, 2012
  A suave bankrobber escapes Paris, gets chased by the cops in Algiers and hides out in an abandoned castle in the "Arabian" desert where the authorities won't go. There are a bunch of other criminals also hiding out including a doctor who murdered his wife who are all trying to get their greedy hands...

• Iron Sky (2012)

  by zacharythax June 7, 2012
  Don't miss this for Roger Corman humor in a big budget space film that could never have been made in Hollywood. A black astronaut land on the moon in 2018 to find that Nazis have been living there since 1945 in a swastika-shaped fortress. They capture him, bleach his skin, eyes and hair, and somehow...
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• Playing Garage Guitar in a House Full of Concert Violinists

  by zacharythax June 5, 2012
  My wife is a mutant. She has a super-power called perfect pitch. If a train whistle goes by she can say, "That's a A chord with a sustained F#." This is both a blessing and a curse for her. If I've got the Cramps on she says it sounds like fingernails on a slate blackboard. Yet if I'm playing and ou...

• Black Death (2011)

  by zacharythax May 25, 2012
  Sort of a sword and sorcery flick without the sorcery. Maybe foreshadowing Game of Thrones. A bunch of guys on horses set out to find a refuge from the plague in this grim, depressing tale with a lot of Night of the Living Dead type conflict. Existential medieval grit . 

• Womb AKA Clone (2010)

  by zacharythax May 25, 2012
  Heavy, serious, arty sci-fi with no special effects. In the near future a tween girl falls in love at the seashore and then her parents move to Japan.  She comes back years later when they're both grown up to find Natalia Tena (Game of Thrones) in his bed, but the two hook back up again and go on a ...

• Cookers (2001)

  by zacharythax May 25, 2012
  The best and most terrifying amphetamine psychosis drug trip story EVER. Gritty, mean-spirited hallucinogenic filmmaking about an obnoxious fugitive (Hector) and his timid burned out girlfriend (Dorena) who hole up in an abandoned house in the woods, cook meth, become paranoid as rats and descend in...

• Nude Nuns with Big Guns (2010)

  by zacharythax May 25, 2012
  This is the segment you WISH make it into Quentin Tarantino's Grindhouse. Echoes of Satan's Sadists and Blue Oyster Cult's "The Last Days of May" A drug deal goes wrong for some nuns and priests on a schoolbus in the middle of Mexican desert with sadistic musclebound bikers. Nuns are sold into prost...

• Mexican Werewolf in Texas (2005)

  by zacharythax May 25, 2012
  Not a werewolf, but the chubacabra is attacking a small town in the southwest rife with racism between the rednecks and the very likeable Mexicans. With a doomed romance and a great looking monster.

• Night Watch (2004) AKA Ночной дозор, Nochnoy dozor

  by zacharythax May 25, 2012
  Complete absence of sanity rules in this incredible original gonzo modern day fantasy from Russia with 2 factions of vampires in a cold war. One watches over the day and the other watches over the night. They drink blood mixed with vodka (!?) drive around in souped-up vehicles (including a sportscar...

• Stone (1974)

  by zacharythax May 25, 2012
  Interesting biker film from Australia that foreshadowed the whole 'Mad Max' vibe by about 5 years. A pagan ritual making biker gang (who ride Kawasakis, it IS Australia, you know) allow an undercover cop into their ranks to protect them from a serial killer who may have something to do with an eco-t...

• Andy Warhol's Vinyl (1965)

  by zacharythax May 25, 2012
  I was psyched to see a pre-Kubrick adaptation of Anthony Burgess' 'Clockwork Orange' but the whole thing is like a b/w filmed stage play (on a very tiny stage with the worst acting this side of Herschell Gordon Lewis. With Martha and Vandella's "Nowhere to Run" (later used in 'The Warriors') and War...

• Make a Wish (2003)

  by zacharythax May 25, 2012
  I enjoyed this every non-exploitative exploitation film. Very low budget matter-of-fact slasher made a cut above by having most of the characters be lesbians and its interesting location. An older woman invites all her former girlfriends on a camping trip where they argue, get lost, drink, make out,...

• Beyond the Black Rainbow

  by zacharythax May 25, 2012
  Don't miss! Debut from director Panos Cosmatos may remind you of a David Cronenberg student film if he collaborated with David Lynch and is far and away of the best surreal, mind bending piece since 'Eraserhead.' Barry, a psychiatrist of questionable motives (who resembles young David Cronenberg !?)...

• Strippers vs. Werewolves

  by zacharythax May 25, 2012
  A U.K. strip club blows up in 1984. Present day a stripper in a Catholic schoolgirl outfit with pigtails and glasses dances starts a gang war by stabbing a werewolf through the eye. This comic book adaptation tries hard to stay interesting, but suffers from too much really awful disco music and the ...

• Rarities Obscurities and Hen's Teeth

  by zacharythax October 28, 2009
  I heard about a Detroit band called THE UP who a record store clerk in Kutztown, PA said were as good as the Stooges. I finally tracked down KILLER UP. Great sound, inept playing but with a slight bit of the savagery at bay. FRANCOIS HARDY was "The 'Yeah Yeah' Girl of Paris" who released albums of c...

• THE WIZARD OF GORE (2007)

  by zacharythax October 26, 2009
   Why remake Herschell Gordon Lewis' inspired reality-bending inept masterpiece? Because with a little bit more of a budget and the influence of Videodrome and Philip K. Dick (and maybe William Burroughs) they actually made a movie that makes its own kind of sense and actually hangs together a lot be...

• Charles Band's Desperation Road Show

  by zacharythax October 16, 2009
  Charles Band's Full Moon Road Show--stand-up comedy for horror fans. After a mind numbing montage of film clips to some heavy metal music, the man of the hour came out for an engaging, informal, off-the-cuff talk about making low budget gore and monsters. We saw her boobies! Although a rabid horro...

• Return of the BLOG

  by zacharythax October 6, 2009
  Just found a Holy Grail album for me for download on Amazon from 60's folk ingénue FRANCOIS HARDY. I read about it in the great must have book UNKNOWN HEROES OF ROCK 'N ROLL where it said that the former IT girl of Paris recorded an Iggy-like hard rockin' album at the age of 50 (!?) I'm listening to...
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• FOUR FRIGHTENED PEOPLE (1934)

  by zacharythax September 9, 2009
  The real reason to see this jungle exotica classic is Claudette Colbert's transformation from  a prim and proper geography teacher in glasses to a sexy a jungle girl in a leopard print bikini(!?) (the timid teacher attempts to dry out some guy's shoes by a fire and ends up burning them up. He get's ...

• Just Some Thoughts as I Have Much Less Time on My Hands

  by zacharythax June 20, 2009
  I got called back to work, so the vast ocean of free time has shrunken into a puddle. Anyone interested in a real movie mag like PSYCHOTRONIC VIDEO in PDF format please contact me to let me know of your interest. If enough people want it I'll put out a monthly (or as often as I can) mag which you c...

• O Lucky Man! (Warner, 73)

  by zacharythax June 11, 2009
  D/P/A: Lindsay Anderson, S: David Sherwin, P/A: Michael Medwin, M: Alan Price If you've seen Clockwork Orange enough to get the subtle touches of humor all the way through it then you'll probably enjoy this. I've read a lot of reviews but none that convinced me the reviewer actually saw the movie. M...
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