THE SHADOWED MIND

An insane asylum set South African horror-sexploitation oddity from 1988 that was heavily informed by FAREWELL JOHNNY, the granddaddy of South African horror/cult films. Taken on its own terms THE SHADOWED MIND is agreeably bizarre, though not nearly as deep as it purports to be.

CHASING HAIRY

I’ll be sure and watch my language when describing CHASING HAIRY. It was used as evidence, after all, in its author Michael Fleisher’s famous lawsuit against Harlan Ellison, who according to Fleisher libelously described him as (among other things) “twisted,” “derange-o” and “bugfuck” in a 1979 Comics Journal interview, in which Ellison further alleged (wrongly) that a Publisher’s Weekly reviewer called this novel “the product of a sick mind.”

The BRAIN PLANT Tetralogy

This unjustly forgotten product of the late-1960’s porno underground, consisting of the novels LOVELY, HEALER, OUT and GLUE FACTORY (all from 1969), is among the most complex and ambitious examples of pornographic literature — or, if you prefer fuckbooks — ever written.

A SERBIAN FILM

2011’s gross out movie du jour, a profoundly vile and repellent compendium of sexual sadism with political overtones. Well made, but the potential audience is limited, to say the least

SANTA SANGRE

A truly amazing 1989 film by Alejandro Jodorowsky–bold, violent, surreal and completely irresistible, it’s one of the decade’s finest films

ANTICHRIST

Head bashing, perverted sex, stabbing, strangulation, testicle smashing, entrail eating, ankle skewering and vaginal mutilation are among the delicacies of this lacerating film, one of the most provocative and unrelenting cinematic offerings of recent years

PHILOSOPHY OF A KNIFE

A history of Japan’s notorious Unit 731, this film, lasting four hours, mixes documentary and staged footage into an utterly unique whole

THANATOMORPHOSE

The spirit of David Cronenberg is evident in this profoundly disquieting art-horror film about a young woman’s body decaying from the inside out