Black Belly of the Tarantula - now that's a giallo I like, although there was a little too much focus on the policeman for my taste. I love it more when private persons are investigating murders, like in The Cat O' Nine Tails and similar movies. But the policeman is played by Giancarlo Giannini and I have a soft spot for him, so that's OK. The storyline is quite nice, I couldnt' guess the killer, and in most giallos it is pretty obvious. See if you can guess him, I thought it was pretty cleverly done. Recommended.

Who Saw Her Die? - almost hallucinogenic-like music, the titlesong (Qui l'ha vista morire) still sings around in my head. Great giallo, although I don't like Venice too much as a location. After his daughter is murdered, an artist is gonna find out who is behind it. His ex-wife tries to help him with this quest, but maybe it is too much for her. And for him. The plot is cool, I had three options for the killer, and all three came along in the final scene, nice! Recommended.

Escapee - pffft, waste of time. Dominic Purcell does a bad job at acting like he is an escaped murderer and threatening a town nearby, where for some reason only young girls live. A policeman is trying to protect them but it turns out he knows more about the murderer than he is telling (wow, surprising plot twist!). Really unexciting lick, the only reason you might wanna keep watching is Christine Evangelista, but I'll save you te trouble. Just look for 3 minutes at the picture below, and I will have spared you 90 minutes of bullcrap.

Solange - aka Cosa Avete Fatto A Solange? Another good giallo, which for some reason gets slanted at several review sites, but I liked it. Fabio Testi, one of my favourite Italian actors, is a gym teacher who has an affair with a student. One afternoon, when they are having an amorous meeting, she sees a flickering knife and some time later the dead body of another student is found on the spot. When more students start to get killed, Testi is caught under suspicion of being the murderer, but after het gets released, he and his wife go out to find the real killer. The story is the best part of this film. I totally didn't see it coming, the question in the title is only answered near the very end of the film. It is quite nasty, you don't get to see everything (which is a good thing, btw, not only for suspense reasons, but also because of the nastiness), but this was one of the better plots I have een lately. Music wasn't so special as in other giallos and acting was sometimes quite wooden, but still, the story saves it all. Fun fact: Solange is played by the actress who leads in I Spit On Your Grave. Recommended.

Death Laid an Egg - very weird and atypical giallo, where there are not so many murders. The mystery is not about who is the killer, but how does the love triangle turn out? This love triangle, between a married couple and the secretary of the man, gets under stress when a second man turns up. The setting makes things even weirder: a fully automated chicken plant, where scientists experiment on chicken too. At one point they made wing- and headless chickens, but these flubbers are not to the liking of the man. Music was awful imo, but weirndess factor was 10, so still some enjoyment. Not for everyone, I'm sure.

Fire in the Sky - OK film about alien abduction. You get to see a group of friends who have an encounter with an alien spacecraft hovering over earth. One of them gets out of the car they're in and walks into the light. He gets knocked down by something invisible, his friends panic and drive off. When one of them returns, the guy is gone. Now the group is suspected of murdering him and police starts an investigation based on the assumption that what the group says is bullocks. After a few days, the missing guy is found naked on a porch at a gas station. He starts tellijng a story about what happened to him. Good acting, some familiar faces in the cast. Good story too, althiugh I would have liked a little more action. The final scenes are cool, but not as gripping as the cover wants you to believe. Recommended, because it is kind of different and well acted.

Death Game - aka Deathrow Gameshow. Comedy with a hint of horror (no gore) about a gameshow called Live Or Die, where deathrow convicts play som games and when they win, which is almost impossible, they get their sentence postponed, or in rare cases annulled. Some funny stuff, some "laugh or I kill you" jokes. I had fun, but I'll probably never watch it again.

Your Vice Is A Locked Room And Only I Have The Key - this long titled giallo (I still prefer Italian titles, btw, much more beatiful: Il tuo vizio è una stanza chiusa e solo io ne ho la chiave) is a true example of the genre. There is a kilelr loose, beautiful women get killed or might be the next victim, the music is top notch (by Bruno Nicolai, together with Morricone and Goblin my favourite Italian filmmusic maker) and the story ends with a twist. Contrary to many giallos I couldn't see this one coming, though. Sergio Martino makes very good stories in films and this one is no exception. There are also some celebrities from Italian cinema in the cast, like Anita Strindberg and Ivan Rassimov. Highly recommended!

Slaughtered - Aussie movie about a bar where a killer is on the loose. He has glas shards in his face and cuts people open with a curved knife. I'm so much into giallo right now that I see this as an Ozzie attempt to make a giallo. Storywise they kind of succeed, but in all other aspects this film is not so good. Not even when you leave the giallo-connection out of it. I simply couldn't keep my attention to the film. This says enough about the quality. Forgettable imo, although the story isn't that bad.

Sand Sharks - ludicrous cgi fest about sharks which swim in sand. All cliches are being brought up to make this creature feature last for 87 minutes. Corin Nemec is the son of the mayor of a small town on an island and he wants to organise a festival to make the island rich and popular again, Brooke Hogan is a scientist who studies sharks and some other nice looking women play serval other roles which aren't for much more than showing of some flesh. If you'd scrap all blonde/non-blonde bimbos, this would have been a drag, but now I had some fun watching the boobies at least. Bad film.

Removal - thriller about a cleaning guy who has been dismissed from a mental hospital where he was under surveillance because he had hallucinations. He gets a job at a house where the owner is a bit weird. The cleaning guy sees him washing off blood and dragging a body along the hallway. Is it real or a hallucination? This film bored me to death. It wasn't creepy or spooky and that's a must if nothing is happening. Skip this one.

Una farfalla con le ali insanguinate - aka The Bloodstained Butterfly. Early giallo where I knew who the killer was after 11 minutes. However, it was still quite interesting to see how the story would develop and how the killer would get caught. Tchaikovsky's first piano concerto plays a large role in the soundtrack, the imagery is nice and although there aren't a lot of killings, it is enjoyable until the end. Nice apotheosis, although it would have been even better without any firearms.

Scream 4 - heard a lot of bad stuff about it, so my expectations were low. Spoofing the modern day horrorgenre was funny at first, but repeating the same joke a few times is never a good idea. Saw many familiar faces in the cast, even outside the expected ones from earlier Scream installments. Enough killings, enough good looking chicks, but the plot felt a bit far fetched. A plus for the gore deparmtent, as there was way more than I expected, but also a small minus because of some gore slapped on walls in a sloppy way. Conclusion: can't reach the original by far, but passes as a nice brainless entertainment flick.

Metal Shifters - aka Iron Invader. A guy in a scrapyard makes a statue out of broken cars, and one day a meteorite falls on earth and puts life in the statue. If you're still with me, you can safely go and watch the film. Otherwise just skip it, as it is really is that weird/strange/stupid. A group of people who just met is gonna battle this machine-monster, and of course there is a cheesy love subplot too. Pretty dumb flick.

Il profumo della signora in nero - different giallo, where the killings start only late in the movie, but by that time I was nailed to my seat because the film had grabbed me. A slow start wasn't promising much, but after a while I got into it and it is a really nice movie, albeit a bit long. The music wasn't so good, but the storyline is nice and becomes creepier towards the end. Quite good, not the best I have ever seen, but still very much enjoyable.

Trasharella - a vehicle for Rena Riffel to expose herself not onoly as an actress, but also as a director/writer/producer/editor. It is about nothing, although I read a review where the reviewer stated that it is a complaint against showbusiness where women are forced to be slutty in order to get a job. Well, maybe it is. The story is about a woman Helena Beestrom wanting to become an actress but then she meets a vampire (who totally doesn't look like a vampire, btw) and she has to fight him. In order to do so, she turns into Trasharella, a vampire hunter dressed in trashbags. This film has a lot of weird stuff, like a segment of silent movie, a fight scene with Batman-like "Punch!" stuff on screen and some songs sung by characters in the film. If you like Rena Riffel this will be for you because you get to see her for 100 minutes straight, but apart from that it is just a very weird film.

Fargo (1996): After watching "No Country For Old Men" I was looking for another Coen thriller and found this movie. The movie is about a (stupid) man who wants to have his wife kidnapped in order to blackmail her rich father. Unfortunately the two guys he hires go over the top and soon the body count rises. The whole movie has a kind of melancholic touch. It feels like everybody is pissed and bored with their lives. It is winter in the movie so that adds to the atmosphere. You have the usual strange/funny Coen dialogues. A very nice movie. While its rating is higher I didn't like it as much as "No Country...".

Mission Impossible 4 - Phantom Protocol (2011): I've seen all parts so far and was expecting another nice action movie. Ethan Hunt has to go undercover as his organisation is blamed for a bombing. The idea felt fresh and the actors delivered a nice performance. I especially liked Jeremy Renner in this one. Anybody knows why this movie is called Phantom Protocol here in Europe but Ghost Protocol in the USA?

Starman (1984): I've read that this is an E.T. rip-off from Carpenter. Yes and no. While the idea does seem alike the movie itself rather feels like a road movie. It is about an alien that crashes on Earth and takes the form of a woman's recently deceased husband (Jeff Bridges). The woman helps him to get to Arizona, where he is supposed to be picked up by the aliens. Of course the USA government notices the flying saucer and wants to capture the alien. There are some touching and funny moments that make this movie memorable. Jeff Bridges and Karen Allen are really great in this one.

Nove ospiti per un delitto - aka Nine Guests for a Crime. A family goes on holiday on a deserted island in the mediterranean. On this island, the father and three of his sons, shot the lover of their sister/aunt twenty years before. This sister/aunt is also on the holiday, as are all sons with their wives, the wife of the father makes 9, hence the title. First everyone is having sex with each other except for one son who is impotent, or so they say in the film. After all this cheating on each other, people are getting killed. One by one they die and the question is like in all other giallos: who is the killer and who will survive? Kind of tame giallo, I must say. The deaths aren't very graphic except for the murder of the lover in the beginning, but that one is also very goofed (guy gets shot, he falls down and only in the next shot you can see blood on his white trousers). The mystery is pretty predictable, all in all it is quite mediocre.

Le Porte dell'Inferno - aka Gate of Hell. Lenzi ripped some other movies in order to make this one: The Beyond for the idea behind the story (a gate of hell is just below the surface and evil spirits are getting out) and for the "scary scenes" with spiders, and he ripped off his own Nightmare City by copying the ending from that movie into this one. That was so superlame! In Nightmare City I was still liking it a bit, but to use the exact same formula 3 years later in another movie is really lazy of Umberto. In the story nothing much happens and if you get bored, just skip to the last 20-25 minutes, as then you finally get to see what all the hassle is about. Unscary and some weird mistakes make this a nice SBiG movie, but even in that department there are less boring films.

Prison Girls - this 70s sexploitation doesn't beat around the bush: after the opening credits we are thrown into a prison showerscene where almost the entire cast participates. After that, we learn that the girsl are gonna go on an experimental furlough, and of course each and every one of them is gonna hev sex on their repsective furlough. That's all this movie is about, in the end the filmmakers try to invent a plot, but it feels smacked on and if it hadn't been put in, nobody would have missed it. So, 90 minutes of sex, if that's your thing, watch this one.

Demons Never Die - the title made me think this ,might be a cool demonic lick, but the synopsis told me it isn't. It's about a girl comitting suicide and then a group of her classmates form a suicide group and they make a deal to end their lives soon too. But then a masked killer with a large knife appears, and the kids in the group now have to deal with this threat first. In the meantime you get to know them, their problems, why they might wanna kill themselves and their feelings for each other. Not your everyday slasher, there seems to be some double layer in this plot. I won't give it away, go watch it yourself, it will be worth your time. This the debut film of Arjun Rose, and he didn't only direct it, he also wrote and produced it. I really hope he will continue to make horrors like this, as this one was very promising. Recommended, if not highly.

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Zvezdnyi inspektor - aka Space Inspector. This Soviet scofi is from 1980, but you would guess it to come from the 50s! The effects are really like 50s scifi from the US and it has that same charm over it. As a plus, you get some very unsubtle Soviet propaganda with it, like the scene with a press conference , where a company is held responsible for a crash of a spaceship, killing the crew. The lawyer of the company just says stuff like "No comment" and "If I'd answer all your questions, I'd have no time to do anything else". Then a voice-over says "The company doesn't take responsibility for it's actions!" Oh noes! The evil corporation! I had fun watching this and it doesn't take too long. Recommended for bad moviefans and history buffs alike.

Jack the Reaper - weak slasherfilm with Tony Todd as an oddball who talks about a madman being on the loose to a group of teens who have to do some extra schoolwork on a Saturday. Later their bus crashes and they meet the killer on a carnival. He kills them all, or does he? Not scary, as it is kind of uninteresting. You don't want the kids to survive per se, because they are quite annoying. The background of the killer is poorly explained, imo. He has been around for a very long time, and... and... well, not much. I'd say skip this one.

That renders a movie pretty much unbearable to me.

Well, then I saved you 82 minutes of your life, chup

Twisted Nightmare - a group of students gets mail about a summercamp reunion. They all attend and go to the campsite of their youth. In a barn close by, the first person dies on the first evening. Good thing, this film takes off quite fast. Then the others are gonna have their turn too. In the meantime, you get to see a story told in flashback about the summercamp, and about a guy who was there too but got burned (literally). Of course, this story has a connection with the present day deaths of the students. I must dsay that some of the killings are quite inevntive, some are more cliche. What bothered me a bit, was that the remaining people only care for one of the deceased, it is like the others haven't died at all. They only keep asking about Jennifer, and not about the others, weird. The acting is wooden at times, but it looks charming anyway. The film goes out with a blast, which is yet another not so probable thing to happen in this movie So while this isn't a very good film, I loved it to see another 80s slasher which was only released on VHS.

Malabimba aka The Malicious Whore - hardcoded English subs obscured a large part of the screen because the font was so big, but still I could have some fun watching this very sleazy Italian flick about a girl who gets possessed and then goes around talking and acting very vulgar, grabbing the waiter in his crotch and the like. In the end she seduces her nursing nun and even has sex with her, but not before she has had sexual action with her own father. Yes, this film shows no boundaries in this department, and later even some hardcore porn scenes werre added to it to spice it up even more. This last thing is kind of superfluous, you don't need to see dicks to know that this movie is dirty. Storywise this is yet another rip-off of the Exorcist, but without the puking. Sleazy and dirty, that's what describes this film best.

Camel Spiders - yet another monsterflick with Brian Krause, he makes them a dime a dozen, it seems. In this one, the monsters are super ugly cgi spiders who jump on your face and then sting you with poison = instant death. It's a nice flick to go spot for mistakes, but you have to keep the cgi mistakes out of the competition, otherwise you can count one mistake per 5 seconds almost. The nicest goof I found was the one where they want to get away from a large group of attacking spiders, but the car won't start. When it finally does, Brian Krause closes the door, as if it was really safe to keep that door open while the spiders were attacking... So, for bad moviefans only.

Foxy Brown - the classic blaxploitation. I had a friend over and we were guessing what would make her pissed off so she would go in revenge-mode and wipe out all criminals in town. So we were like "her brother goes back into dope dealing", "her boyfriend gets snitched on", etc. This film supercedes them all! It is exaggerated uber drama, mixed with funky music. Cool. You dig? Recommended for some fun watching.

Shadowbuilder - this was a wtf movie. Everytime something happens, you're like "wtf?" because it makes little sense. I can't imagine Bram Stoker actually wrote the story, because this film is so wretched, it can't be anythinge than the filmmakers misunderstanding the story totally, or just taking the theme and then make an entirely different film out of it. The guy who plays Henry in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is a priest in this one who needs to prevent a boy being possessed by the devil. Or something. While he was great as Henry, he sucks in this part, as does almost the entire cast. Only the boy acts a bit decent. Bad cgi makes this full circle. I'd say skip this one.

Madman - OK slasher which needs to get the flow going. It takes a while, but then we get some nice decapitations and some hilarious scenes. The gore is nice, and when Gaylen Ross gets her shotgun to put an end to the madman, you get some bonus fun! Second half is entertaining, keep that in mind in the first 45 minutes. Recommended.

The Devil Story - aka Il etait une fois le diable. This is some weird French flick. Shadowbuilder was already a wtf movie, but this one was triple wtf. It was kind of in line with The Necro Files, because it had bad acting, totally weird characters (some sort of a nazi zombie controlled by an elderly woman, for example) and on top of that some bad dubbing too. It is a short movie, like TNF, and that actually has saved many viewer's brains from definitive frying, I guess. If you want to watch something different, go for it. If you expect a storyline and at least some logic, avoid this one like hell.

MEGAf00ckingCOOL movie named: "DRINK ALL %!".