SCANNERS
This David Cronenberg freak-out about warring telepaths contains one of the stand-out moments in horror cinema. As for the rest of the movie, it’s pretty good
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
THE SABBATH
Any movie featuring the delectable Beatrice Dalle involved in orgies and medieval torture can’t possibly be all bad—or so I thought until I sat through this mess
KILLER! (1989)
This 1989 serial killer thriller, made for a reported $9,500, was once called “the most technically accomplished super-8mm movie ever”
THE KEEP
This big budget period piece was scripted and directed by the talented Michael Mann, proving that sometimes it takes a great director to make a truly awful movie
THE OTHER HELL
Nunsploitation insanity from the late Italian trashmeister Bruno Mattai that even by traditional nunsploitation standards is profoundly trashy and perfunctory, and frankly not very entertaining at all
OPERA
Not one of Dario Argento’s best films, but certainly one of his most outrageous. No other Argento movie more enthusiastically pushes his preferences for fluid camerawork, garish colors and extremely graphic violence
ATRAPADOS
ATRAPADOS (1981) is one of the world’s great unknown cult films, a shocking, nightmarish, mind-expanding apocalyptic parable
APARTMENT ZERO
I wasn’t terribly impressed with this Buenos Aires-set psychological thriller when it first played back in 1990, and it hasn’t improved a whole lot in the succeeding years
ANGUISH
A fairly clever movie theater set splatter film, ANGUISH has some clever touches but suffers from the fact that the film-within-the-film is really lame