COFFY (1973)

I know that women kick ass. I’ve seen it up close. But you don’t see it enough in movies, and you never see any woman kick as much ass while looking as good as Pam Grier. You can take your Angelina Jolies and keep ‘em, as far as I care. In this movie, Pam plays the title role, and she’s a nurse whose sister gets addicted to heroin. So she becomes a one-woman anti-drug squad. She gets set up by her boyfriend, her best friend gets beaten into a coma, and she comes out on top by taking down every mobster, crook and dirty cop in Los Angeles. Pam is a goddess.

BLUE SUNSHINE (1978)

So back in the ‘60s, some college kids took some type of LSD called “Blue Sunshine.” 20 years later, all their hair falls out and they go on killing sprees. I think that explains a lot, actually. Unfortunately, the guy who is uncovering all of this is the most unappealing jerk I think I’ve ever watched. My dad was kind of amazed that he was played by Zalman King. I didn’t know who that was, and his response was that he wrote and directed a bunch of movies that I can’t watch until I’m old enough to leave home. (I looked them up later…he wrote 9 ½ WEEKS??? If that’s half as sexy as people say it is, I don’t get how this goofball learned enough to write it. He’s that unappealing.) This is a good movie, though, despite the star and the goofiness of the premise. It’s written and directed by the same guy who made SQUIRM, and it’s really surprisingly tense! It’s also a lot smarter than you’d think. Lots of political shenanigans and conspiracy stuff. The music is also excellent.

42nd STREET FOREVER (Vols 1-5) (date n/a)

Want something to watch, but don’t know what? Need to kick back and enjoy something but don’t want to commit to a full movie? Need some inspiration to help you pick out the next exploitation movie you want to see? Look no further than any one of these DVDs. These are insanely entertaining compilations of trailers from the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s. Horror, action, comedy, softcore sex movies…as long as it’s down and dirty, it’s here. I know some of you are thinking, “why would I want to watch a bunch of commercials for other movies?” Let me tell you, sometimes a 2-minute blast of a movie is all you need. They really knew how to sell movies back then, and these are some of the best examples of that. The trailers are funny, chock full of action, scary, sexy, quick and punchy. Some of the discs have great commentaries, one has a feature on the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, and all of them are must-haves.

SQUIRM (1976)

Did you know that electricity makes worms go nuts? Lesson learned. This movie is crazy! It’s so much fun! Nature strikes back when a power line in a tiny Georgia town goes down and turns normal earthworms into crazed flesh-eating fiends! They attack everybody! They burrow into a guy’s face! They come out of a shower head! Why are there so many worms? Who cares??? Let go and get into it!

MANOS: THE HANDS OF FATE (1966)

You know how I said that PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE isn’t the worst movie ever made? That’s because THIS IS. My best friend told me that he saw the MST3K version of this and that it was hilarious. So I picked up the DVD of the real version at the comic store because it was only $3.99. OH MY GOD. You know how I said that EQUINOX got past all the limits (money, acting, effects) because it felt like the people making it loved making it? I think everyone involved with MANOS was sentenced to make it. Nothing works. Music? Bad. Acting? Bad. Effects? Non-existent. Stupid painting? Bad. Dogs? Bad. Script? Was there one? Ending? Not soon enough. I sat through it, but only because I couldn’t believe just how much worse it could get.

THE RAVEN (1963)

If you want a movie with the best guys in horror starring, this is it. But it’s not a horror movie, it’s one of the first horror comedies. Roger Corman had been making movies out of Edgar Allan Poe’s stories for a while, and decided to do something to poke fun at them. So he got Richard Matheson (who wrote a lot of the best TWILIGHT ZONE episodes) to write it, and got Vincent Price (who’s in a lot of the other Poe movies), Peter Lorre and Boris Karloff to star in it. They’re all hilarious! Price and Lorre especially. Jack Nicholson shows up looking like he’s my age or something! It’s got nothing to do with Poe’s poem, but it’s about a war between three magicians, and it all builds up to a showdown at the end. I love it!

EQUINOX (1970)

Holy crap. My dad suggested I check this out, because he used to see it on TV all the time growing up, so he picked up the DVD online. It’s put out by the Criterion Collection, who normally just do art-house stuff, so I was kind of wary of it being all slow and boring. But man, this movie is all kinds of amazing. There’s two different versions on the DVD, and they’re both pretty different, but the basic story is the same (and pretty much the same as THE EVIL DEAD) – college kids go to see their professor at his cabin in the woods, and there’s an evil book that conjures up demons and opens up portals to the “other side.” The story is really simple, the acting isn’t all that great, the effects are all classic stop-motion style but are really cheap…so you’d think with all this that it wouldn’t be worth watching. But like THE EVIL DEAD, it gets past all that and just works! You get the feeling that they made this movie just because they loved doing it, so if it’s not particularly scary or anything, it just makes you feel kinda good.

TALES FROM THE CRYPT (1972)

All right! Another one of those Amicus anthology pictures. This one is all based on stories from horror comics in the 1950s (geeky note: only two of the stories are from Tales From the Crypt! The others are from The Haunt of Fear and The Vault of Horror, but they all came out at the same time by the same people, so it’s kind of like splitting hairs.). I’ve got a few of the reprints of the comics, and they’re all GREAT. This movie isn’t as much fun as the comics themselves, mostly because just about everyone’s very British and very stiff-upper-lipped, and the artwork in the comics is a lot more ghoulish but it’s still pretty fun on its own. There’s a Christmas story about a deranged madman dressed like Santa. There’s one about a guy who has a car wreck with his mistress and things only get worse. One’s about a poor, kindly old guy (Peter Cushing!) who entertains the neighborhood kids and gets pushed into killing himself (this one is really sad!!!). One is about a monkey’s paw that grants wishes, but the wishes all turn out in the worst way possible. And the last one is about a horrible old jerk who takes over a home for the blind and treats everyone like crap. In the end, they get their revenge, and it makes me squirm just to think about it. This is one of the best of these anthology movies, but if you really want something fun, check out the comics. They’re AMAZING!