Trash Menagerie

Dir. Andrea Bianchi Bimba’s in trouble. In a gothic castle, her family has conducted a seance to try to contact her dead mother, accidentally releasing the spirit of a dead relative that finds its way into Bimba’s body. As Bimba begins to act out in a series of escalating naughty behaviors, it’s up to Sister Sofia, the family’s resident nun-in-training to free Bimba from the curse and save her soul from eternal damnation. Maybe. You’d be forgiven for concluding that Malabimba is a horror film based on the above description. Centered around a young girl being possessed by a spirit in an old gothic castle, the premise is ripe for all the sorts of Exorcist style shenanigans that only Italian rip-off artists can deliver. But director Andrea Bianchi and writer Piero Regnoli have something more important on the mind; lots of sleazy sex. This is much more a psychosexual soap opera than it is a horror film. If you’re looking for blood and gore, or ghosts and ghouls and goblins, you’l...

Dir. James Bryan James Bryan and Renee Harmon are dynamite. They’re magic. They're no slouches individually when it comes to low-budget exploitation, but paired together they are unstoppable. How else would you explain Lady Street Fighter? By all accounts it should be an unwatchable piece of crap. The plot makes no sense, the acting and dialogue are uniformly terrible, the action is clunky, and the eroticism is painfully awkward. But somehow Bryan and Harmon are instead able to turn these ingredients into a golden nugget of cinematic insanity that must be seen to be believed. The film opens with a woman being tortured to death by men trying to extract from her the location of a stuffed dog containing sensitive materials. The woman’s twin sister, Linda Allen, arrives in L.A. with said dog, apparently unaware of its significance and is promptly attacked by two thugs in a parking garage. One of the thugs drives a car into the other’s face, but luckily this leaves him only wit...

aka  Soul Vengeance Dir. Jamaa Fanaka Welcome Home Brother Charles is a film that is unfortunately as relevant and resonant today as it was when it was released over 40 years ago. In its racial politics at least. Not so much in its sexual politics. But more on that later. It is also unfortunately a little bland, rarely giving up any exploitation goodness until the final act. The second feature of then UCLA student Jamaa Fanaka, best known for the Penitentiary trilogy, Brother Charles is a meandering and disjointed film with a few surreal artistic touches that make it a worthwhile viewing if you can temper your expectations. Brother Charles ’ opening credits play over a dark void in the middle of which is what looks like the Zuni Fetish Doll from Trilogy of Terror if it were designed by H. R. Giger. Accompanying this image is a theme of creepy dissonant horns, priming the viewer for some kind of horror or dark fantasy. However what we’re first presented wi...