ETOILE
A lame ballet-centered horror flick that was mercifully forgotten until the release of BLACK SWAN, with which it shares quite a few similarities
EPIDEMIC
Denmark’s Lars Von Trier has made some wonderful films in the horror genre (THE KINGDOM, ANTICHRIST), but EPIDEMIC, his first such effort, is not among them
ELVES
Ludicrous straight-to-video anti-Christmas trash from the eighties! ELVES is popular with bad movie buffs, but don’t expect much
EL AMOR BRUJO
Flamenco dancing takes center stage in this musical extravaganza from Spain’s Carlos Saura. All told it’s an impressively stylized work that interweaves authentic Gypsy folklore with song, dance and a fairly potent ghost story
EATING RAOUL
This is the most famous movie directed by the late Paul Bartel, a highly successful indie black comedy about sex, murder and cannibalism
SUPER XUXA VERSUS SATAN
The Brazilian kid show hostess Xuxa is the headliner of his beyond-ridiculous, utterly inappropriate kids’ film whose title adequately sums up its so-called charms
STREET TRASH
Another eighties-era gorefest that adds up to very little conceptually but excels in manic inspiration. It’s about bums who get a hold of flesh-melting hooch—plenty of grue ensues!
STRANGLER VERSUS STRANGLER
There’s no other movie quite like this loony comedy-chiller from Serbia, which never takes an expected turn and has a cheesy yet curiously elegant style that’s very much its own
THE STEPFATHER (1987)
An intelligent, disturbing and altogether impressive eighties thriller, one of those rare films that’s well worth going out of your way to see
SPECIAL EFFECTS
This 1984 cheapie appears to be writer-director Larry Cohen’s answer to PEEPING TOM, a unique and intelligent account of voyeurism and exploitation in the movie business that, as usual with Cohen, is all-but done in by its low budget and uninspired direction