BEHIND THE DOOR
A hard-hitting example of silent horror, hailing from 1919, that was “lost” for nearly a century
WHEN YOU COMIN’ BACK, RED RYDER?
Very likely the acting highlight of the recently deceased Marjoe Gortner, who’s deeply menacing and devilishly charismatic as a crazed hippie terrorizing a desert diner
THE FAR CRY
A worthy, if unexceptional, addition to the late Fredric Brown’s retinue of pulpy suspensers
Smut, Paris and Ed Wood
Two not-quite-classic Paris-set smut novels, one written by Ed Wood
BETTY BLUE
A sprightly account of a tragic love affair that was made into an enormously popular 1986 film. The book’s better.
MADNESS (1969)
The concept of an insane asylum as a metaphor for modern civilization didn’t originate with this Estonian import, but the film did provide this particular movie model with a quintessentially Eastern European highlight
JOYRIDE
The word for this splatterific book is fun—dumb fun, yes, but fun, nonetheless
GHOSTBURB PSYCHO
From the land down under, a black-humored exercise in demented misanthropy that recalls FANTAZIUS MALLARE and FIGHT CLUB.
THE BRIDGE
One of the bleakest, nastiest, most despairing dystopian novels of the 1970s, written, ironically enough, by a devout Christian
THE TRAP DOOR
Arguably the most interesting of the late 1970s-early 80s no wave films of Beth B and Scott B