Brides of Blood - the last film of the "Blood" collection and as part three, this is a different one. It's a mix of the previous films atmosphere and some Godzilla atomic age warning morale added in. The story is about a team of Americans setting foot on a remote island which is in the zone where atomic bombs were tested in the 1940s. The team sets out to help the indigenous people of the island, but they have "returned to the ways of their ancestors" as they put it. They mean a ritual where young women are selected to be sort of sacrificed to some creature. This creature is the result of the atomic tests and wants to "be satisfied" by the young women who are being strapped to poles and usually don't survive the ordeal. The members of the team are shocked of course but they also try to find out where the creature comes from: it will be a big surprise when they find out! I enjoyed this one a lot, the effects were funny to see and you can look for the threads moving the branches of the mutated trees. Actin was pretty much OK but the creature is priceless. Recommended for bad moviefans.

Color Out Of Space - good scifi film with Nicolas Cage on a roll as the father of a family who happen to have some kind of a meteor land in their garden. The rock glows strangely and it also makes sounds. The next morning the police, the mayor and the local TV crew are coming around, but the rock has gone by then. Of course nobody believes there was a UFO or anything, but in the next few nights, strange things start happening: the dog disappears, the mother of the family cuts her fingers off while preparing dinner and on the way back from the hospital they see a strange glowing cat on the road. Things get worse when they find out the alpacas they keep have turned into some strange looking creature, where will this end? Great acting, good atmosphere and some nice subplots about the town wanting to expand economically, the usual creature feature stuff. The alien is cool, especially its form, pretty original. Enough gore to go around and the ending is also well done imo. Recommended!

Black Emanuelle 2 - an Emauelle film without Laura Gemser, it has been a while since I saw one of those and it takes some getting used to. Sharlon Lesley takes the role this time and she looks very different from Gemser with a more voluptuous body and short curly hair instead of the long locks of Gemser. In the story Emanuelle is under treatment of a psychiatrist because she lost her memory after she was the victim of an explosion during the civil war in Lebanon. For her doctor it's a mystery: Emanuelle seems to remember things which are opposite of what her friends and family remember. Who is speaking the truth? In the meantime most of these memroies are sexrelated of course, otherwise there isn't any lead to show off as much skin as possible. The Severin release I watched has a pristine image and sound quality, very nice to watch. Almost as if it's a film from more modern times whereas it's from 1976. Acting is OKish, the dub is bad but you can get used to it and although the story is somewhat boring, they try to make as much as possible of it by having memories about very different locations like Venice and Beirut. It's fun, but I prefer the Gemser films.

Seeds of Evil - aka The Gardener. A film about next to nothing, in which a woman who feels very alone (because her husband is busy working) hires a strange gardener who always seems to run around (half) naked. His previous employers all have died and as soon as he starts working on the garden,m two things happen: the garden becomes the object of widepsread jealousy in the neighbourhood because of its beauty, and strange things start happening too, like people getting sick all of a sudden and pets dying. Apparently the gardener is a tree commanding all other flora to kill, but I didn't gather that from the film, might have to do with the late hour and my muffled brain, but still. This was pretty boring overall and although the cast tries to make something out of it, the wooden appearance of the gardener and the lack of spectacular kills make this a numb horror imo.

7 Cadaveri Per Scotland Yard - aka Jack el destripador de Londres. A Spanish giallo, I know only a few of them, but this is a good one! It has all the classic ingredients: a gloved knife killer, a good number of naked female victims, the police wandering around in the dark and several suspects and matching red herrings. Acting is nice, although Naschy is a wooden actor he is still some sort of a presence on the screen. The plot is pretty good, it's some kind of a throwback to Jack the Ripper but not entirely. Halfway through I thought I knew who the killer was by some subtle sentence in a scene of no importance, but I turned out to be wrong: the red herring caught me this time. The dubbing was meh, but the only option for me: there was no Spanish track on this disc even though it's a Spanish film, but as usual part of the cast was speaking English, part Spanish and part Italian. Good fun, recommended, especially for giallo fans!

Don't Look Now - after John and Laura Baxter (Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie) lose their daughter in a drowning accident we find them in Venice where John works on restoring a church. The work consumes him and when they meet two sisters, one of whom is blind and gifted with "second sight", they hear about their daughter still being there. John wants to know nothing of it ("She's dead!") but Laura wants to know more, as she started to feel much better after the experience. Although John doesn't believe in the psychic powers, he starts seeing a little girl running around in a red coat, just as his daughter was wearing when she drowned. Things start spiraling out of control after Laura has returned to England quickly to check on their son and John still sees her in Venice. A beautifully made film, where the image tells the story. The plot itself is not really elaborate, but the city, the water, the boats, the people on the boats and in the houses, the weather, it all is part of a big artform, like a huge painting. I enjoyed this a lot not only because of this image storytelling but also because of the great acting: everyone does a great job and Sutherland and Christie are superb! If you want gore you should look elsewhere but if you want mystery with a bit of murder, this is a great choice. Recommended!

Forbidden Paris - aka Paris Interdit. This shockumentary features as a double on the The Sadist with the Red Teeth DVD and it's an interesting little thing. It's not real (you can see some people feature in several items as different characters) but it has some fun chapters. There are chapters on strange cults, fakirism, doomsday preppers, you name it. Nothing particularly Parisian in my eyes, but you could imagine that some of this stuff could only flourish in big cities like Paris. A fun pastime but not really a film with a story, it's more of an anthology focusing on modern day anthropology. Fake anthropology of course.

Monsturd - the plot of this made me laugh: an escaped convict gets shot next to a sewer and the present chemicals and faeces turn him into a big pile of poop. This shitmonster starts killing and both the police and a mad scientist are after him, for different purposes of course. The front cover of the film is misleading as the shitmonster doesn't seem to have hands like shown on there, neither is it hunting pretty ladies as suggested on said cover. The film turns into a corny cringefest rather quickly and from then on the shit-jokes are filling the air. Gets repetitive fast but the premise is still absurdly funny. It's a shame the execution was done so poorly, otherwise this might have become a cult classic fast. As it is, it doesn't beat any other highschool shot on video recording. Could have been much better.

Brutes and Savages - another shockumentary, but this one is more in the line of the cannibal/mondo films than with Paris Interdit, as it visits (apparently) remote parts in Africa and South America. It states in the beginning that all scenes are based on truth, whether they are real or reconstructed. This should get you on the edge of your seat, because which scenes are gonna be real and which are gonna be faked? Well, rest assured: most of the "spectacular" scenes are faked imo. Some scenes contain the slaying of animals: lama, turtle, goat, etc. This sometimes looks pretty real, but the blood has a strange colour which led me to believe it was fake blood., How they did it, not sure, but I'm pretty sure not many animals were actually killed on camera. The script contains some cliches of the genre, like "we were not allowed to film this, but we did it anyway, knowing we were risking our lives!" ba da boom! It also has those scenes filmed in ways you can hardly do it candidly, like with close ups and wide shots alternated. The best fake scene is the one where the African youngsters have to cross a river with crocodiles in it: it is so fake you won't believe it till you see it. It has shots of the guy in the river, shots of a different guy in a swimming pool (both without croc in sight) and shots of a fake croc biting away at a fake arm. Hilariously bad, I was laughing out loud at this scene. Others are not as spectacularly fake, but it still is rather interesting. It does contain fake info as well. One culture is described as having declined because of unlimited sexual behaviour, this is total BS as that culture went under because of natural disaster, probably caused by El Niño. The scenes with people are alternated with stock footage of animals fighting each other, tese scenes have nothing to do with the rest of the film, in South America it is even in a very different location compared to the other scenes. It was interesting, but I enjoyed the mondo/cannibal films more, so not sure if I will ever watch this again.

Dark Heritage - an adaptation of an H.P. Lovecraft story "The Lurking Fear", of which I have seen a different movie years ago. This one is much more B-grade: acting is rather wooden, dialogue seems ro be read out loud and there are some serious goofs going on. Besides the classic microphone visible in the top screen, there are some rainscenes in a caravan in which you can obviously see that they are spraying the caravan with a gardenhose (the top of the screen shows you there is no rain at all there). This made me laugh out loud, the monsters aren't as bad, but the film never succeeds in leaving its B-grade environment. The plot twist is hardly a surprise for the horrorfan, but if you like bad movies, this one is a candidate for a night with friends.

Silver Saddle - a western by Lucio Fulci. Of course horrorfans know Fulci best because of his horrors like The Beyond and Nightmare Concert, but he also.made films in other genres, like sex comedies ans westerns. I had seen one western by him before "The Four of the Apocalypse" and this one is the second I have seen. It was rather inevitable to compare the two and I think that while you can still see in "Four of..." that Fulci is mostly a horror director (some mild gore in that film), you can't  really in this one. The story is quite nice, but the whole thing with the kid is a bit cringe. The kid's acting is not up to par and in the final scene it gets comical in some sort of a failed slapstick way. Apart from that, this is oretty enjoyable as a western. Nice wide shots of barren landscapes, cool firefights and a twist in the plot, albeit a bit predictable. All in all pretty good, so if you like (spaghetti) westerns or are a Fulci completist, check this one out.

Weekend Murders - aka Concerto per pistola solista. A giallo by a director I hadn't heard of before. It's introduced shortly by Peter Baldwin (who pronounces the Italian title wrongly)and then we are in England where a will is being read in the presence of a lawyer, a policeman and the remaining family members. Of course some get a lot others don't get anything and soon the first shot is fired at a family member. A detective is brought in to investigate, but it's actually the constable who makes the sharpest observations. This was a nice touch and the mystery as to who is the killer remains a mystery for almost the entire film. I guessed right this time, although I was wrong about the method being used by the killer as that was rather unguessable. Nice film, the characters are varied and pretty wild at times, acting is good and even though it's an Italian productionentirely, it gives off heavy British vibes overall. What I didn't like was that most of the murders were done by shots instead of slashing/hacking/knifekills, this is a minus for the giallo atmosphere in my book. Other than that good fun, and recommended for giallo/Italo fans.

Star of David: Hunting for Beautiful Girls - a very weird Japanese film about Tatsuya, a guy who was born fro the rape of his mother. Her husband was forced to watch while it happened and his father is an escaped rapist/murderer. His stepfather (the one who was watching when his wife got raped) is very unhappy when Tatsuya is born, so he treats him like dirt his whole life and degrades his wife by tying her up and having sex with other women in front of her. So when Tatsuya grows up it's not a surprise he is a little twisted in the head. When he kills his stepfather and then inherits his fortune, he thinks it's the best idea ever to just play the dandy, go out and find some girls and then lock them up, beat them with various whips and the likes and rape them. Most of the girls scream, faint or try to escape. Some of the girls seem to like the rough treatment (maybe the fantasy of the writers/director?) but Tatsuya doesn't care. He just wants to keep kidnapping girls, but after a while he meets his real father, will that change anything? Very weird film with lots of tits and ass and also often the suggestion of sex but you never see any reproductive organs. You do see the sadomasochism and other not so common sexual fantasies carried out and the film functions as a vehicle to show off this stuff. Very exploitative, so if you are into this kind of thing this is a good pick. If you want a great story, or are looking for horror/gore, you should pick something else.

Mask of Thorn - British indie slasher, pretty low budget and you can see it. The first part is pretty nice, plays out in 1972 when a woman is seeking refuge in a hospital, because a killer is after her and her baby. After the killer (Thorn) has killed everyone, his followers take the baby, as "it is his now". Back to present day we see Bethany having her 16th birthday. Her father is only focusing on his career and her mother is trying to show at least some love to Bethany. When they leave for something official, they tell Bethany she is gonna be picked up by someone at 9, but before that her friends arrive to take her to a party in a school closed for the night. Of course the killer shows up and we get the plot twist presented, but if you didn't see that coming from miles away I suggest to rewatch this when you are awake There are plenty of kills and enough gore to go around, but it's not very clear why Thorn is killing all these people, or where he is from so that makes little to no sense. How people meet their demise is also a tad monotonous, although the squashing of some heads looked really nice B-flick like. If you like low budget you will enjoy this, there are some goofs to be watched for but not too many. Just below average, I'd say.

Cat People - one of the first films I deliberately rewatch. I haven't seen everything in my collection yet but I recently bought this and was in the mood for it so I gave it a spin. I watched this way back when I still lived with my parents so that's a few decades ago. I remembered one scene in particularly, where a black panther jumps around in a bedroom. It didn't take long for me to recognize the scene, but I forgot everything else except the fact that it was about people who could turn into big cats and back. So it was a nice watch, there is some gore but nothing too much and the shapeshifting thing is also shown very lightly, there are two scenes with the shifting and they have some pretty good effects for the day and acting is very good: both Nastassia Kinski and Malcolm McDowell really deliver. I'm glad I watched it again especially since it turned out I forgot so much about it (no wonder considering it has been so many years and also a few thousand films inbetween). I think if it wasn't for the nostalgia factor, I would have been less positiive because the film runs for a rather long time and there are some stretches in which nothing is happening really. But if you like panthers, shapeshifting or 80s supernatural films, then this might be for you.

Season of the Witch - aka Hungry Wives. An atypical George A. Romero film. Many people compare this to Martin, his other non-zombie splatter film, but Martin left a better impression on me than this one. I looked up what I wrote back then (in 2008, wow!) about Martin and it was a nice story but it needed more excitement to be perfect. So yes, better than this one. I can be pretty short about this film: it's really boring. The setting is nice because I really like the 1970s, but apart from that the film is almost about nothing, it seems. There is a lot of talking going on but it's very average housewife chatter without any direction or aim, there are some mildly funny scenes where the wives are gonna smoke grass and some where the main character is buying supplies to become a witch and using them (this whole witch thing is in her head mostly btw - a take on the psychological strain of the woman who has a very boring life being neglected by her workaholic husband). I found myself browsing the internet on my phone more regularly over the course of the film, even reading some news articles I had read already. I wanted my Romero collection to be complete so I bought this one cheap. It turned out it was also cheap because of hardcoded French subs. Still I am happy I didn't pay 30 Euros or more for this flick as imo it's not worth it. If you are not a Romero completist I would say skip this. To me this is not Hungry Wives but Hungry Filmfans, wanting a whole lot more after watching this.

Two films I don't really know what to think of:

My Red Guts - aka You'll Never Look at a Toothbrush in the Same Way Again: Women's Flesh - My Red Guts. Apparently a TV episode (according to imdb). There is not really a story, it's a Japanese splatter self mutilation short which reminded me a bit of Guinea Pig 1 and 2. A woman is using a toothbrush to satisfy herself and she does it so fanatically that she starts bleeding. Later she also cuts herself and is bleeding out. It's a shock short, there are four or five lines of dialogue maybe, the rest is the woman cutting herself. Not for the fainthearted, also not for those looking for a film with an actual plot.

Luz - started this film the day before yesterday but I fell asleep because it was late. Strange film, where the actors take on different roles sometimes. There are five main characters: Luz (the cabdriver), a doctor, Nora, Bertillon and Olarte. Nora knows Luz from her past and she is in love with her but she can't get to her. She sort of possesses the doctor who is being called to the policestation where Luz went for help. What follows is some kind of therapeutic session in which Luz explains about her childhood trauma and the doctor tries to get inside her head in order to take her over. Bertillon conducts the session and Olarte is the translator, because Luz speaks Spanish and we are in Germany. The whole language thing adds to the confusion which is all present throughout the film and it makes watching this not very easy. I'm not sure if I understood it all but it is very much off the paved road. Interesting,might rewatch it to see if I can grab it better.

Infection: The Invasion Begins - a low budget 2011 film about an object which happens to contain some wormlike creatures (although some of them have spiderlike legs) who can enter humans and take them over, much like more famous (and better) scifi films like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. In this film it's extremely obvious who has been infected and who hasn't and the characters who aren't sometimes act superbly stupid. The aliens look very fake and are made of bad cgi which is also used to portray a house on fire (tip": this is almost always a very bad idea because it looks so terribly bad). The character development is lacking, you know that the split up couple will get together again after 3 minutes in, the local sheriff is a dumbass who is also pretty obviously in kahoots with the aliens. The side characters are more side than characters, and the ending is meh to OKish. The front cover of the DVD promises more than you will get. If you want to see a good scifi go for Invasion of... like mentioned before or if you want to have a laugh at bad scifi pick a move like Battle Beyond The Stars.

The Black Scorpion - black and white 1950s monster flick. It plays out in Mexico, where a giant scorpion is rampaging through the countryside, destroying towns and villages in its way. The local people are in disarray but fortunately there is an American scientist around and he leads the people to victory over the monster. Not the only monster by the way, there are several large creatures battling each other too. The backstory is so so, the monsters are actually quite cool especially for the era in which this film was made. One of the cooler monsterfilms from the 50s if you ask me: both the size of the monster and the scale of destruction are impressive. Don't expect any character development or large amounts of gore, as they didn't do that in 50s monsterfilms, but you will enjoy it if you match your expectations correctly.