The Mammoth Book of Slasher Movies Part 6

Nico Mastorakis's film, which also goes by the names A Craving for l.u.s.t, Cruel Destination, Devils in Mykonos, Island of Perversion and Psychic Killer 2, has been described as a cla.s.sic in the field of exploitation and followed on the back of the 1970s grindhouse boom and the success of The Texas Chain Saw Ma.s.sacre (1974). As a first time director, Mastorakis's aim was to make money; to do so, he was at least going to have to match every other exploitation producer of the period. With this in mind, he made a film that went out to shock, as Tobe Hooper and Wes Craven had before him, using some of the most degrading episodes so far committed to film. While it included many sequences of s.e.x with the delicious Celia regularly removing her clothes, and scenes of rape, one with a goat, its display of nudity was somewhat fleeting. s.e.x in Mastoraki's movie was invariably a precursor to violence and death, the three essential ingredients to any sleazy exploitation feature of the period. Typically, the acting was poor, but the humour was dark and the photography well staged. When it was first released to cinemas in the UK, almost fourteen minutes of s.a.d.i.s.tic footage had been removed. Five years later, it was packaged as a video and issued in the November of 1982, when it roused the wrath of the moral crusaders of the day, whose demands insisted it be listed as a video nasty. There was confusion when it was removed from the list having been mistaken with Narciso Ibanez Serrador's film of the same name, only to be returned in October 1985 until the end of the so-called crisis. The film was finally issued uncut to DVD in 2010. These problems with the BBFC wouldn't deter Mastoraki, who went on to acquire a reputation as a highly capable low budget filmmaker.

ALTHOUGH LIONEL (ANDY Signore) puts a lot of effort into his janitorial duties for the Generico Corporation, he has become disgruntled by the belittling treatment he receives from the company's staff. When he leaves work, he returns home where he lives with his janitor guru, Cornelius Growbo (Bruce Cronander). Infuriated by the conduct of those who work for the company he embarks on a series of s.a.d.i.s.tic reprisals aimed at those who refuse to afford him some respect. With the body count now escalating, an FBI agent is placed on the case, but Lionel's rancour drives him on in his retaliatory crusade. The blood bath is brought to a halt when he falls for Hillary (Fiona MacIntyre), a recently widowed colleague. Sadly, for him she decides to leave the company, fearful she will become another of the killer's victims. Her decision is upsetting, but it encourages Lionel to search for work elsewhere.

Later on while in the pub, he finds himself in the company of a group of gorgeous girls from the Tau Nu Alpha Sorority House who need someone to clean up after their parties and topless slumber gatherings. Lionel eagerly offers to take the job and rushes home to tell Mr Growbo of his change in fortune. Mr Growbo proves not to be such a good friend; he immediately slips off to the Sorority House and takes Lionel's dream job from under his very nose. The embittered Lionel then takes out his anger on a couple of Generico's employees who he discovers having s.e.x in the reception area, but is caught by Willis, the new janitor (John Carreon). Willis, it turns out, is as deranged as Lionel, and wants a piece of the grisly action. The pair of them head to the sorority house to seek out their b.l.o.o.d.y revenge.

The Janitor was an independent low-budget slasher movie that delivered on both the queasy gore and irreverent comedy. First time directors T. J. Nordaker and Andy Signore never once intended for their film to be taken too seriously, but they deftly picked upon so many of the features that made the slasher comedies of the 1980s so successful and rehashed it for a new generation. The blood and guts flowed freely as did the hot girl action and they even dared to create a graphic parody of the celebrated Psycho shower scene.

THEOLOGY STUDENT SHIRO Shimuzu (Shigeru Amachi), along with his mysterious friend Tamura (Yoichi Numata), becomes an accessory to a hit-and-run accident, which results in the death of what may have been a Yakuza gangster. His guilt-ridden conscience insists that he give himself up to the police. However, when he tries to go to the authorities his taxi crashes, killing his girlfriend Yukiko (Utako Mitsuya). Shiro's life becomes one of drink and despair and to make things worse he learns that his mother is terminally ill. He sets of, to the nursing home owned by his father, Gozo, in Tenjoen. When he enters the home, it resembles a vision of h.e.l.l on earth, where, amidst the drunken painters and negligent doctors, he learns the truth about his adulterous father and meets Sachiko, a girl who looks exactly like his dead girlfriend. The distraught young man escapes the insanity of the home and makes his way along a railway line. As he continues his battle with his guilt, he is again confronted by the elusive Tamura, which leads to him being accosted by his dead girlfriend's mother, intent on revenge. Very soon, Shiro will leave our world in a climax that sees the death of virtually all the residents in his father's nursing home; then he faces that which lies beyond the gates of h.e.l.l in a succession of extreme scenes, the likes of which had never before been seen in cinema across the globe.

Director n.o.buo Nakagawa, described as the j.a.panese Alfred Hitchc.o.c.k, funded much of his film Jigoku, which literally translates as "h.e.l.l", with his own money. He was then fifty-five years old, and considered a veteran of j.a.panese cinema, when he created this daunting vision of h.e.l.l, which entwined the Christian and Buddhist interpretations of eternal d.a.m.nation. His thinking on this feature turned away from the traditional j.a.panese ghost stories for which he had previously acquired a very favourable reputation and instead produced a nihilist piece of Grand Guignol that was to provide the firmest of foundations for the excessive j.a.panese terrors to come. For the first part of his Faust inspired masterpiece he embellished his characters with considerable depth, lamenting on life and death, and then cast them into a surreal depiction of flayed flesh, spikes driven through jaws, torn limbs and disembowelled intestines. The cinematography created the strangest of hues to engender a world of torment that the reproachful Shiro would have to escape. Back in 1960, there was nothing in film that could quite be described as Jigoku's match. It would inspire later remakes in 1979 and 1999, neither of which captured the bizarre premise of the original.

FORTY-YEAR-OLD JUAN HAS done virtually nothing with his life; his friend Lazaro, an army trained martial arts expert, can say the same thing. As a series of violent attacks pour through the streets of his hometown, the radio reports put the blame on Cuban dissidents paid by the US government. However, Juan and his friends soon realize their attackers are not normal human beings; the venom in their bite has the capacity to turn the victims into violent killers, whose numbers grow by the hour. In true Romero fashion, Juan soon learns the only way to bring them down is to destroy their brains. Our shrewd-minded hero also knows the best way to confront the situation is to turn his back on his socialist past and cash in on the situation. Seeing a window of opportunity his slogan becomes "Juan of the Dead, we kill your beloved ones". Lazaro, along with his children Vladi and Camila, stand at Juan's side ready to help people get rid of the menace that surrounds them . . . all of course for a reasonable price. The zombies are already running out of control, devouring flesh and, as they have in the past, ripping out guts. The people of a ravaged Havana look to leave the island and head out to sea. Juan, however, has no choice but to fight for his homeland, armed with a baseball bat and catapult.

There are suggestions that Alejandro Brugues' gore-strewn action-packed black comedy, Juan de los Meurtos, could be Cuba's first feature-length horror film as the government banned the production of horror and fantasy based films adjudging them to be detrimental to the political leanings and the social programme of the Cuban government. However, one of Brugues' cast and crew, Jorge Molina, wrote and directed Ferozz: The Wild Red Riding Hood in 2010, a film steeped in witchcraft and Satanism that contains scenes comparable to the torture p.o.r.n of more recent cinematic horror. Brugues defied his country's social programme and grew up watching American zombie films, owning a copy of Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead (1981), and saw the potential in the hopelessly resigned city of Havana. For fifty years the people of Cuba had lived with the prospect of a war with the United States; instead they face the mindless onslaught of the living dead. This was the zombie movie Brugues, a graduate of Cuba's International School of Film and Television, had hoped to make. With the success of his film Personal Belongings (2006) he was able to negotiate enough backing to create a movie that would be considered a blockbuster by Cuban standards, with most of it coming from Spanish financiers and the state-owned Cuban Inst.i.tute of Cinematographic Industry and Arts. His tight camera angles give the impression of an almost deserted city as the threat drives the populace away into the sea. As his team strove to make the film a success, Brugues almost ran into trouble with the police when they were summoned by the city's munic.i.p.al rubbish collectors, who found a zombie's head mixed in with the refuse, which says much for the make-up effects.

A COUPLE OF HUNTERS come upon an abandoned church in a mountainside forest. When they cross its threshold to explore the interior they are confronted by a machete-wielding man who laughs heartily and then delivers a hack to the groin of one of the men. The other quickly makes his escape.

Five campers, Warren (Gregg Henry) the keep-fit enthusiast, his shy girlfriend Constance (Deborah Benson), Jonathon (Chris Lemmon), the girl-mad party animal, and his desirable girlfriend Megan (Jamie Rose), along with the geek cameraman, Daniel (Ralph Seymour), arrive in the mountains. They have ignored the warnings of forest ranger Roy McLean (George Kennedy) not to continue in the direction in which they are heading. Further along the way they come close to hitting the surviving hunter, who insists they turn round and drive away. Once again they fail to take heed of this sound advice and look instead to set up camp. After an evening of lighthearted revelry they retire, all the while being watched by a presence in the woods. The following morning, they catch sight of a young girl named Merry Logan (Kati Powell) before she scampers into the forest. Later, as Megan swims naked in a pool, she a.s.sumes the hands that stroke her legs beneath the water belong to Jonathon, but he is already drying himself off. Panic immediately sets in, but she manages to swim to safety. There is something amiss in this beautiful spot, but the teenagers do not have the wherewithal to take any notice of the signs around them.

When Jonathon spots Merry and begins to chase her, he is forced to cross a roped bridge overhanging a fast-flowing river. As Merry manages to get further away, Jonathon is struck in the hand by a machete brandished by a malformed man whose incessant laughter makes this episode even more terrifying. The rope bridge breaks, and the youth falls into the turbulence below. In a bid to save himself he begins to climb, only to come face to face with the same man, who kicks him to his death down in the rapids. The killer then tracks down Megan and Daniel, who have found the church seen at the very beginning of the film. Daniel receives a fatal machete blow to the stomach and when Megan escapes into the church she is greeted by what appears to be the same man only to learn, shock of shocks, he is one of identical twins. Her discovery won't save her as he begins to hack her to pieces with his trusted machete, while his deranged brother uses Daniel's camera to commit their activities to film. While searching for the hapless campers the forest ranger Roy comes across Merry's family, a barmy hillbilly father and a hushed mother who is also her sister. He reveals the homicidal twins are theirs, but they have no love for trespa.s.sers and now bear down on Warren and Constance. Constance's sanity is now at stake.

It will come as no surprise to learn Jeff Lieberman regarded John Boorman's Deliverance (1972) as being the main influence on his entry to the backwoods slasher genre, borne out by its release in France as Survivance. He still considers Just Before Dawn to be one of his own personal favourites and while it bears a thematic comparison to The Hills Have Eyes (1977), Lieberman maintains he hadn't seen this movie at the time of filming. With so many slasher films gaining theatrical release, his film was just one of many and pa.s.sed by very quietly. However, with the arrival of the video market it ama.s.sed a staunch following, gaining praise for its opulent cinematography, which did so much to capture the magnitude of this eerie locale, yet at the same time imposed a sense of claustrophobia seen in so many memorable horror movies. With an above average cast who were destined to achieve greater things, Lieberman had the chance to concentrate on generating the suspense and intensifying the atmosphere rather than relying solely on the exploitative violence preferred by so many of his contemporaries. Other forest-based blood baths would follow, but few would match the tension in Lieberman's narrative.

SISTER GERTRUDE (ANITA Ekburg) is convalescing following neurosurgery on a brain tumour and feels she needs more time in which to recover, but her Mother Superior foolishly thinks otherwise. When she returns to her duties in the geriatric hospital, she soon becomes addicted to their supply of morphine as she tries to rid herself of the incessant headaches and then her schizophrenia once again begins to come to the fore. In her deranged state, she entices an impressionable young nun, Sister Mathilde (Paola Morra), into a lesbian affair, demanding that her lover wears silk stockings. She then dismisses the hospital's doctor, leaving her free to torment the elderly patients, one of whom has her false teeth shattered by the maddened Gertrude. It isn't long before a series of deaths occurs in the hospital with the deteriorating Gertude as the obvious suspect. She doesn't help her situation when she visits a neighbouring town and after meeting a young man allows him to stand her up against the wall and take complete advantage of her willing body. Her Mother Superior must now intervene if this madness is to be brought to an end.

Giulio Berruti's Suor Omicidi, also ent.i.tled Deadly Habit, was based on a series of murders and maltreatment in a geriatric home in the town of Wetteren in Flanders, Belgium, towards the end of 1977. Sister G.o.dfrida of the Apostolic Congregation of St Joseph was accused of stealing more than $30,000 dollars from her elderly patients to support her morphine addiction. She also confessed to killing three patients with overdoses of insulin, because they had become difficult during the night, and was allegedly ripping out catheter tubes from bladders. Berruti's film never quite captured the horror of these events in the predominantly Catholic region of Flanders, but it remains an intriguing addition to the nunsploitation phenomenon, which peaked during the 1970s, and whose cinematic origins can be traced back to a Scandinavian silent film Haxan (1922). Killer Nun is a hybrid of the sleazy nunsploitation cinema of the period and the popular giallo murder mystery, but appears restrained when it is trying to deliver the exploitation demanded of these particular genres. The gore was only ever implied, although the killings were appreciably s.a.d.i.s.tic, especially the torture with pins and the hypodermics administered to the face. This, coupled with former Miss Sweden Anita Ekberg's strong performance, had Mary Whitehouse denounce Berruti's film as a video nasty and it was banished to the Director of Public Prosecutions' list of objectionable films in August 1984, only to be dropped in the July of the following year. When Killer Nun was submitted for its 1993 release to video, the scene detailing the torture of the old woman, with the close up of a needle piercing her eye and the scalpel lacerating her bandaged flesh, had to be removed. The merits in Giulio Berruti's occasionally stylish direction were ignored, as was Alessandro Alessandroni's compelling score; the DPP could see this was a very sleazy entry in the already bothersome exploitation genre. It would finally gain acceptance before the BBFC when it was presented for release to DVD in 2006. The scenes that had once caused offence now appeared dated and no longer contained their original shock value; as a result the film was finally released uncut.

A GROUP OF STUDENT friends Phoebe (Elaine Wilkes), Vivia (Sherry Willis-Burch) and Jennifer (Joanna Johnson) are delighted when they gain acceptance into their house sorority. On the night of the initiation, Vivia had played a prank on the sisterhood, which is why she and her friends were so readily accepted. Now she must engage in a similar escapade at a party planned by her sorority sisters for a neighbouring fraternity in an old house, which twenty years before had also been home to a similar fraternity. The sisters cajole their housemother into letting them celebrate in the abandoned house. Before the girls make their way to the house, the housemother decides to pay a visit to ensure it is still safe. In the overgrown garden to the front of the manse she stands over a grave and talks to someone called Allan, explaining why she is allowing the girls to have their party and tells him what happened all those years ago was merely an accident. As she attends to an unsteady banister, a mysterious figure, who is obviously someone of her acquaint, appears before her and bludgeons her to death. The girls remain unaware of this fatal occurrence and begin to decorate the old house for their April Fool's Day party and at the same time prepare some mischief. Poor Jennifer has serious misgivings about the house's dark past, but the party goes ahead. Once the festivities get under way the guests begin to fall foul of the killer seen earlier on the stairs. He stalks the house dressed in a deep-sea diver's suit employing a hammer, a pitchfork, a corkscrew and a guillotine to dispose of his victims. In a twist that sets it apart from so many slashers of the era, an evil spirit sweeps through the house turning Jennifer into a demonic creature, akin to The Evil Dead, that crawls around the chandeliers and across the ceilings before it too joins in with the butchery.

Canadian director William Fruett had directed the controversial, but later acclaimed, violent horror Death Weekend, which also goes by the name House by the Lake (1976). Filming on Killer Party is claimed to have started in 1978, but as it neared completion the budget became exhausted and production was ceased until 1984, when it was finally finished only to languish for another two years before receiving a limited theatrical release by MGM. This version was severely edited, removing much of the gore seen in the original cut. The t.i.tle was also altered from The April Fools to Killer Party because the distributors were concerned that it could be confused with the darkly comedic April Fool's Day released that same year. When it saw release in 1986, the slasher years were almost over and the set pieces appeared cliched; yet if, as it is claimed, this was originally shot in 1978, it could have been a highly influential movie and bears certain similarities to h.e.l.l Night (1981). Killer Party has become another rarity from the 1980s, and is currently only officially available in the VHS format.

THE INSPIRATION FOR Wes Craven's controversial The Last House on the Left goes back to the thirteenth-century Swedish ballad "Tores dotter i w.a.n.ge", first adapted for the cinema by Ingmar Bergman for his film The Virgin Spring (1960). Bergman soon after received an Academy Award for his achievement as Best Foreign Film. Craven's vicious offspring certainly remains a landmark in its own right, but was adjudged as being cold and dispa.s.sionate in its violent portrayal and was never going to be considered for an Academy Award.

During the prologue, we are told the events in this story are based on an incident that actually happened, but conjecture remains as to the truth behind this statement. The Cohen Brothers later made a similar declaration in the preamble to their movie Fargo (1996), the impact of which would have a major bearing on the audience reaction to the staging of certain scenes. Craven boldly set out to exaggerate the shocks in what proved to be a very disturbing piece of cinema. On the eve of her seventeenth birthday, Mari Collingwood plans to travel to New York to see the underground band Bloodl.u.s.t, accompanied by her close friend Phyllis Stone. As she heads off in the family car, a couple of s.a.d.i.s.tic prison escapees, Krug Stillo, a rapist and serial killer, along with Fred "Weasel" Podowski, a child molester and murderer, are hiding out with their partner Sadie (Jeramie Rain) and Krug's drug-addicted son, Junior Stillo (Marc Sheffler).

After the gig, the two girls try to score some marijuana. Their wayward mission leads them to Junior who makes them an offer of Colombian gra.s.s if they will come back to his apartment. Once inside they are overcome by the two escaped criminals and their accomplice Sadie. Phyllis does her best to resist, but is punched in the stomach and brutally raped. The repulsive scene is juxtaposed with the parents of Mari and their preparations for her surprise party.

When morning comes, the girls' ordeal continues as they are imprisoned in the boot of the gang's car and driven away to the countryside, as they journey north to Canada. In a strange twist of fate, their vehicle breaks down in front of Mari's house as the police are following up on the reports of the girls' disappearance. When the gang realize there is no chance of getting the car repaired, they drag the kidnapped girls into the woods and then begins the cruel torture with appalling beatings, urination and forced lesbian s.e.x. After trying to escape, Phyllis is tracked to a nearby cemetery, where Weasel plunges his knife into her back, shortly before the rest of the gang catch up to continue the merciless a.s.sault and then eviscerate her. Moments later, her severed hand is presented to Mari, as she endures the humiliation of having the evil Krug's name carved into her chest before being raped and shot as she attempts to make her escape along a lakeside.

Craven hasn't finished with his audience yet. Having changed their clothes the gang arrive at the Collingwoods' home, introducing themselves as travelling salesmen. In a series of tense scenes, Mari's mother Estelle discovers the gang's involvement with her daughter's disappearance. She and her husband flee the house and scurry into the woods, where they find Mari next to the lake only just alive. The poor girl tells of their ordeal and then dies. The enraged parents carry their daughter's body back to the house as the stimulus behind the violence now shifts from being gratuitous to b.l.o.o.d.y revenge. Ironically, it was Krug's slaughter at the hands of the incensed chainsaw-wielding Doctor Collingwood which proved to be one the most s.a.d.i.s.tic moments in the entire film.

Written by Wes Craven in 1971 as Night of Vengeance, the original concept was far more graphic than the film that finally saw completion. Soon after shooting began, the decision was taken to tone down the excess Craven had first envisaged to make for what the production team considered as being a much softer film. While this was going on, their exploitative brainchild went through many name changes, including s.e.x Crime of the Century, Krug and Company and The Men's Room. The film's infamy was made all the worse as its debut came only a few years after the infamous Manson Family ma.s.sacre. This series of grisly murders had sent shockwaves across the United States; their ferocity presented an unsettling reflection of a part of the American way of life many would have preferred to have forgotten and raised concerns as to the erosion of family values.

There was nothing new about the idea of a revenge movie, but this was infinitely more vicious than anything that had been seen before and paved the way for films such as Death Wish (1974) and the equally contentious I Spit on Your Grave (1978). Craven's movie also attracted the attention of the censors, particularly in the United Kingdom. The film was refused a certificate for cinema release by the BBFC in 1974 owing to its sadism and violence. However, when home video arrived in the early 1980s it saw a release with very few cuts. At this time a video did not fall under the jurisdiction of the BBFC, but this loophole in the legislation generated the video nasty scare that began in 1982, backed by the tabloids and culminated in the Video Recordings Act of 1984. The film was now banned, and it took its place on the Director of Public Prosecutions' list of inflammatory video nasties. For The Last House on the Left the ban remained in place for the remainder of the 1980s and on into the 1990s. Its standing as a video nasty, however, inevitably elevated it to a status of cult notoriety. Blue Underground Limited toured an uncut print around Britain without the consent of the BBFC, with Southampton City Council granting this version their "18" certificate in the hope of overcoming the ongoing problems with the BBFC stance on certification. It was later granted a licence for a one-off showing in Leicester in June 2000, but the BBFC remained steadfast.

The dispute continued with the BBFC winning an appeal in June 2002 made to the Video Appeals Committee (VAC) by video distributor Blue Underground Limited. The BBFC had insisted sixteen seconds of cuts to scenes of s.e.xual violence before the video could be given an "18" certificate. Blue Underground Limited stood their ground refusing to make the cuts, so the BBFC again rejected the video. The distributor then appealed to the VAC, who upheld the BBFC's decision. During the appeal, film critic Mark Kermode was called in as a horror expert to make a case for the film's historical importance. However, after his report, the committee not only upheld the cuts but actually increased them, with the film being granted an "18" certificate with thirty-one seconds of cuts in July 2002. It was released in the UK on DVD in the May of the following year. Those scenes that fell foul of the BBFC were made available as a slideshow extra on the disc; in addition a web-link was provided to a website from where the cut scenes could be viewed. Finally, in March 2008 the BBFC cla.s.sified the film uncut for video, thirty-six years after it had first been released to American theatres. A year later Rogue Pictures released a remake with Wes Craven as producer, now without the hullabaloo that surrounded the original.

SHARP DRESSED THEY may be, but these three men, Steele (Jack Canon), Lomax (Ray Green) and Billy (Frederick R. Friedel), have murder in mind as they lie in wait to repay a friend's betrayal. When Audrey arrives, accompanied by his gay lover, the gang force a lit cigar into his throat and then Steele and Lomax systematically beat him to death. His lover narrowly escapes via the window but Audrey is left for dead on the floor. Steele and his accomplices then quickly depart the city to avoid police detection, heading into the remote countryside. During the course of their journey, they terrorize an innocent shopkeeper and then force a teenage girl (Carol Miller) to strip before they take aim at the apples placed on her head. Their travels take them to an isolated farmhouse where they find a reclusive girl, Lisa (Leslie Lee), who looks after her wheelchair-bound grandfather (Douglas Powers). Safe in the knowledge that this is an easy number, the hoodlums decide to stay for the night. In the night, Lomax becomes interested in the girl and tries to rape her. To his shock, she pulls a razor from her bedside table and soon graduates to the virtues of a sharpened axe. Although much of the violence takes place off screen, the silent girl makes able use of her axe as she slays each one of her a.s.sailants, with blood recurrently splattering across the screen.

Shot in only ten days on film that was purchased as surplus stock from filmmakers of more substantial repute, Lisa, Lisa became more commonly known as Axe, and has also gone by several different aliases including, California Axe Ma.s.sacre, The Axe Murders, California Axe Murders and the emotive The Virgin Slaughter. Frederick Friedel's feature was another low-budget exploitation movie very much in the tradition of Last House on the Left (1972), which for many years has been maligned for its awkward camera techniques and flawed storyline. However, the gaps in this account rest with the distributor whose demands meant much of his film was left on the cutting room floor. Their intention was to present a feature for the drive-ins on a bill with two or three other movies; so Friedel had little choice but to cut it down to the bone. This destroyed any attempt at credible characterization and consequently led to annoying omissions in the narrative flow, but those who were paying their money at the drive-ins were rarely concerned with such trivialities.

Friedel's film would have drifted into obscurity if had not been released to video in the UK during the troubled year of 1982. As the crusading tabloid gathered steam, it became another feature to be labelled as a video nasty, on this occasion in September 1984. There it would remain, as one of thirty-nine films deemed too offensive to see release on these sh.o.r.es. The cover to the video made available in the UK became immediately problematic when it alleged that Lisa's age was only thirteen, although this was never actually inferred anywhere in Friedel's movie. This surely can be the only reason why Lisa, Lisa caused such a stir, for although its content was undeniably exploitative, the violence occurred away from the camera's gaze. It remained unavailable for over twenty years until its mastering to DVD in 2005.

WHILE RIDING THROUGH the Lake District to escape the madness of London city life, George (Ray Lovelock) becomes stranded when his motorbike accidentally collides with Edna's (Cristina Galbo) car. She is en route to a hospital to have her drug-addicted sister Katie admitted for treatment. Close to the scene of the accident, a group of agricultural scientists are experimenting with ultra-sonic radiation designed to deter the insects in the surrounding area. Their experimentation has a shocking side effect: the recently deceased begin to rise from their graves and shamble through town, slaughtering and then gorging on their victims. George and Edna try to alert the local constabulary but the bigoted sergeant (Arthur Kennedy) appears more interested in arresting the young couple, for little more than their outlandish appearance. While there are probably no more than a half dozen zombies actually ever seen in the film, the viewer would be unwise to underestimate their murderous potential. This mob proves to be unusually strong and reveals itself eager for blood as one young nurse discovers prior to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s being torn off and her stomach ripped to pieces. As their numbers begin to grow, armed with tombstones the zombies try to break down the church door in a nail-biting cemetery sequence before the final b.l.o.o.d.y showdown, in what purports to be the Manchester Morgue.

In the wake of his Spanish terror Ceremonia Sangrienta (1973), released as Blood Castle, Jorge Grau was asked to make The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue. Originally ent.i.tled Non si Deve Profanare il Sonno dei Morti, before going on to be released as Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, The Living Dead, Breakfast at the Manchester Morgue, Don't Open the Window and Zombi 3, it was intended to cash in on George A. Romero's unexpected success on Night of the Living Dead (1968). Rather than resorting to simple exploitation, Grau carefully considered this premise to create a film that captured both the influence of Hammer's masterpieces and the Italian terrors of the day. Although his zombies were in no way as visually terrifying as those unleashed by Romero and Lucio Fulci, there was no denying the threat in their shambling gait as they staggered with bloodthirsty intent through the English Lake District. This was an unusual collaboration, bringing together an Italian/Spanish team in the countryside of the north west of England, but Grau's crew managed to give this ordinarily picturesque locale a sense of decay that perfectly suited the mood of his film. A black humour would pervade the grisly capers of the zombie horde as it began to go forth and multiply more than twenty-five years before the infected destroyed the entire country in Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later (2002). The graphic gore and violence caused problems during the film's initial submission to the BBFC in 1975; one minute and twenty-seven seconds of cuts were demanded before an "X" certification would be issued. When the film appeared on video in 1983, it was bound to invite the attention of the DPP and by October 1983 had been prosecuted and listed as a video nasty. It wouldn't be until the April of 1985 that The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue was removed from the offending list. The VHS release of that year then had to comply with another twenty-six seconds of cuts to those already prescribed in 1975. This meant removing shots of a police officer's mutilated body, a complete cut on all flesh eating, eliminating footage of burning zombies, edits to the entire scene depicting the Doctor's murder by an axe and the excessively gory attack on the nurse. When Grau's film was again considered for release in 2002 all of the previous BBFC cuts were thankfully waived.

AS SHE LIES in the sun, enjoying an afternoon of peaceful solitude, a young girl is knocked unconscious by a crazy in a mask. He drags her body away, and hides it in the bushes and then ties her up. Sometime later, he returns with a lawn mower to carry out the first of a series of gruesome murders, akin to so much of the exploitation cinema of the period. Inspector James Cameron (John Smihula) is the hard-edged cop a.s.signed to bring the girl's killer to justice. The trail leads him to a woman's decapitated head that has been discarded on a beach. When he fails to get the support he needs from his superiors, he quits the force but very soon finds himself in a descent into a deranged world of torture, slaughter and cannibalism. The masked man and his evil accomplice are chain-sawing and chopping up their victims' bodies, all of whom just happen to be young girls. Their entrails are then sold to a young man, who in turn feeds them to his cannibalistic leprous father and his flesh-eating a.s.sociates. Cameron had best beware the father is getting ever stronger by the day.

Nathan Schiff has a reputation for being a next-to-no-budget gore director, shooting his early films on Super 8 mm. To modern eyes, they appear murky, resembling the homemade films of weekend family get-togethers, which is probably all they were ever intended as being. His previous film Weasels Rip My Flesh (1979), made at the tender age of sixteen for just $400, was a homage to the B-movie science fiction of the 1950s; its meagre success generated just enough money to allow him to produce The Long Island Cannibal Ma.s.sacre. There was no denying the young Schiff's enthusiasm as he combined many features of the emerging trend for slashers and threw in the splatter of Romero and Fulci's gut munching. The gratuitous gore effects were an exercise in pure imagination, using pig intestines, fish heads, and condoms. Sadly, the acting wasn't to match the director's gusto and the dialogue was at times absurd, but this was a line of horror that honoured the insane tradition of Hersch.e.l.l Gordon Lewis. So much so, his homemade offerings were given midnight screenings in Manhattan, where they garnered a degree of notoriety, which many years later led to his film being released to DVD.

EIGHT YEARS AGO, John Lucker went on a killing spree, claiming the lives of eight women. Soon after his capture the details of his perverse crimes were revealed, which led to a lifelong sentence in a mental facility. After a failed suicide attempt, he awakes from a coma, rapes and kills two nurses, before fleeing the private clinic in which he has been imprisoned. While on the run, he learns that one of his victims, Cathy Jordan, survived her ordeal. Lucker becomes incensed at her still being alive and the psychotic l.u.s.t that left eight women for dead all those years ago once again rises to the surface. As he tries to find Cathy, he takes to killing more women, one of whom he keeps for a week before succouring his necrophilic craving. When he finally catches up with Cathy, so begins her psychological torment.

Twenty-five-year-old film student Johan Vandewoestijne wasn't overly keen to divulge the true nature of his script when he looked to finance this little venture. It was hardly surprising; the repulsive John Lucker proved to be one of the sickest villains to emerge in a decade that had given birth to so many other perverted maniacs. The prolonged scenes of necrophilia detailing his violation of the putrescent slime-covered corpse were shot a full twelve months before Jorg b.u.t.tgereit paraded his hideous spectacle in the lauded Nekromantik (1987). Vandewoestijne's direction appeared to have an unholy delight for the maggots and worms that had buried their way into the rotting carca.s.s, which only a week before had been an attractive young woman. This stomach-turning sequence culminated in the now infamous "finger licking good" episode that continues to both shock and amuse its audience. Vandewoestijne's film was always intended as a low-budget piece of exploitation, feverishly endeavouring to disturb with its violence and explicit displays of misogyny. The outrageous content consigned it to the world of underground cinema, a place reserved only for the most audacious in cinematic excess. Lucker the Necrophagous could have very easily disappeared without trace, for the producer destroyed virtually all of the negatives once the film had been completed. The original movie was considerably longer, featuring an investigative journalist who got a little too close to the Lucker mythos. Due to its sordid nature, its release to VHS was extremely limited, making it one of the most sought after collector's pieces of the period. When it was recently restored to DVD, the process proved to be extremely problematic, but the final cut has remained true to its grimy underground infamy of twenty-five years past.

JULIA (TRISH EVERLY) teaches in a school for the deaf in Savannah, Georgia. As she looks forward to her twenty-fifth birthday celebrations, her hideously deformed twin sister Mary (Allison Biggers) resides in the mental ward of the nearby hospital. When they were children, Mary used to take pleasure in inflicting harm on her sister, especially on their birthday. Thankfully, the beautiful Julia has managed to come to terms with this unhappy period of her life and has since gone on to become an adored teacher at the school. With both of their parents now dead, they have only one surviving relative, their uncle, Father James. He appeals to Julia to go to see her sister, but her visit only rekindles Mary's malice and she swears to make Julia "suffer as she had suffered". Upset, Julia returns to her home, a renovated manse that has been converted into apartments. This choice of house was rather interesting, for it was actually supposed to be haunted, thus adding to the film's eerie air. When Mary escapes only days before their birthday, a succession of murders soon ensue. Her choice of weapon was somewhat different from those relished by her contemporaries, but proved just as controversial. She kept at her side a snarling Rottweiler, who gorged his victims' throats and viciously savaged their hands. The evil pet was to receive its just deserts when it burst headfirst through a door to be put out of its misery by a handy power drill. The finale is remarkably similar to that observed in Happy Birthday To Me, the Canadian slasher released at the same time, but no one has ever been able to determine who exactly copied who.

Egyptian filmmaker Ovidio G. a.s.sonitis's low-budget There Was A Little Girl is more commonly known as Madhouse, in addition to going by the names And When She Was Bad and Party des Schreckens, and builds on the poem "There Was a Little Girl" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow as the premise for its narrative. The director had already acquired a reputation for producing low-budget copies of the far more substantial movies, which included Beyond the Door (1974) inspired by The Exorcist (1973); similarly The Visitor (1979) made ample use of the The Omen's (1976) premise and Tentacoli (1977) was not unlike the celebrated box office hit Jaws (1975). His films may have been highly derivative, but they each saw major theatrical release and rewarded a.s.sonitis with a success that would maintain his position in the industry. With a typically limited budget, he created a well-observed drama, enhanced by the compelling performance of the deaf children in Julia's care. The mood remained sombre and the house atmospheric, allowing a.s.sonitis to conjure with suspense rather than the gore many enthusiasts of the day would have preferred.

Although an improvised dummy was quite often used during the Rottweiler attack scenes, the film made it to the UK list of video nasties, having been released without certification to the home video market. It was released four times on video, originally by Virgin-Label in 1984 in a heavily edited format and then again in 1989. The film's graphic content and seeming cruelty to animals ensured Madhouse was not to be pa.s.sed without cuts in the United Kingdom until 2004.

ON THE FINAL night of summer camp the counsellors and children gather around the campfire to enjoy the time-honoured practice of telling ghost stories, in a scenario very similar to The Burning (1981). Max, the man who runs the camp, talks of Madman Marz, a farmer who was supposed to have lived in the area. In a fit of madness he turned on his family while they slept and butchered them with an axe. After discovering his crime the locals caught up with Marz and hung him. His body, however, disappeared and, so the legend goes, when his name is called he appears armed with his trusty axe. The kids can't resist making fun of the story and call out the psychopath's name. Madman Marz we soon learn is something more than a legend; his disfigured presence still prowls these woods surrounding the isolated camp. It doesn't take long before counsellors are faced with mutilation and cruel slaughter. Some of the group will meet their end before the hack of his axe, while others have their heads thrust into a car engine and are decapitated by a car bonnet. Director Joe Giannone dared on this occasion to tamper with the rules by having his lead characters fall before the grunting killer, with only the rabble-rouser of the piece, Richie, surviving the grisly onslaught.

This was Joe Gianonne's one and only time in the directorial chair before moving into production. With working t.i.tles of "Madman Marz" and "The Legend Lives", he succeeded in making his film a little more than a poor man's Friday the 13th in the year when the slasher craze went into overdrive. Under the light of the moon he crafted an air of finality with some commendable night photography and blue-toned lighting that evoked the foreboding in these woods. The chase scene in the kitchen, culminating in a static shot focusing on Ellie's foolish attempt to hide in the fridge, would ensure his audience stayed for the duration and pa.s.s the word on so it reached its target audience. This was a low-budget feature with advertising at an absolute premium, but it went on to enjoy a cult status.

AFTER KILLING A man in self-defence in a small Thai town, photographer John Bradley (Ivan Ra.s.simov) disappears into the rainforest to capture the wildlife and scenery in his camera's lens. His guide becomes concerned when they appear to be venturing too far up river. His trepidation is borne out when he is killed and, as Bradley awakens, he is captured in the netting of a native tribe. The natives haul him away to their village and string him up, convinced that he is a mythical fish-man. Maraya (Me Me Lai) thinks otherwise; she knows he is only a man and very soon Bradley is reduced to life as a menial slave. After killing Maraya's fiance, Bradley escapes only to be recaptured, and his punishment begins when he is trussed up on a rotating cross with darts aimed at his exposed body. He survives his ordeal, and eventually gains the tribe's acceptance, marrying Maraya in a rather strange ceremonial ritual. Their happiness is tainted when Maraya falls ill during her pregnancy and Bradley joins the tribesmen to fend off a cannibal attack.

Umberto Lenzi's Il Paese Del Sesso Selvaggio, which has also gone by the names Deep River Savages, Mondo Cannibale and Sacrifice, unconsciously pioneered the Italian fascination for cannibal excess. This wasn't the flesh-eating exploitation that was to torment the horror movies of a few years hence; rather, Lenzi presented a well-conceived emotionally charged adventure that only resorted to the gore of cannibalism as the film came to its climactic finale. The human violence was toned down, although it would have been appreciably extreme for the audiences of the day; the cruelty forced on the animals, however, would cause Lenzi's film considerable problems. This was the first of the director's trilogy of cannibal features, followed by Eaten Alive! (1980) and Cannibal Ferox (1981), and even though there was an intensity to its s.e.x scenes it would never have been truly notorious. However, when it was submitted to the BBFC for its 1975 UK cinema release, three minutes and forty-five seconds had to be removed to those scenes involving animal cruelty. When it came uncut to video in the UK in 1982, it survived until March 1984, when it was listed as a video nasty. The Man from Deep River remained on the list until September 1985; over forty years after its first release in the UK, the original cuts remain in place.

AN OBSCURED FIGURE watches a young couple as they frolic on the beach. When the young man goes to collect some wood, the voyeur approaches the young woman and without warning takes a razor to her throat. On his return, the young man is attacked by the same killer, who almost decapitates his prey by pulling ever so tightly on the wire that binds his neck.

Hours later, the killer, Frank Zito (Joe Spinell), awakes screaming in his sleep. This overweight Vietnam veteran lives alone in the squalor of a small, one-room apartment located somewhere in New York City. By day, he works as the landlord in a small apartment complex. His tenants have remained oblivious to his fixation for stalking and killing unsuspecting women in the darkened streets of this rundown locale. Having slain his victim, he scalps them in a sequence of vile shots using a razor and then adorns his trophy and their clothing on his bizarre a.s.sembly of lifeless mannequins. Once beautified, the mannequins are escorted to his bed, where Frank continues an ongoing conversation with his mother, who was killed in a car accident some years before. She was, in truth, an abusive prost.i.tute whose relentless cruelty scarred her son, turning him into the unhinged killer he has now become. His collection of mannequins never quite satisfies his nonsensical needs, and after only a few nights, boredom sets in and he once again takes to the streets in search of his quarry.

Garbed in hunting gear, Frank places a shotgun in a violin case along with some ammunition and his ever-reliable razor and then steps out into the night. While driving through Brooklyn, he catches sight of an amorous couple leaving a disco to go to their car. The man (Tom Savini) and woman park up in a lot near the Verrazano Bridge and then climb into the back seat for some late-night action. As they kiss, the woman glimpses Frank's shadowed figure at the car window and urges her lover to drive her home. For them it's too late for such concerns; in a series of slow-motion frames, Frank leaps astride the bonnet and blasts the shotgun through the windscreen, blowing the man's head clean apart. The scene carries an additional degree of infamy in that it was believed to have been a simulation of the Son of Sam killings carried out by David Berkowitz between July 1976 and August 1977. With this in mind, the audience knows the woman cowering in the back seat has little chance of survival; Frank mercilessly aims the shotgun and fires. Her disco attire is later put to good use, t.i.tivating one of his beloved mannequins.

Several days later while strolling through Central Park, Frank is snapped by a fashion photographer, Anna D'Antoni (Caroline Munro). He manages to locate her address and is so astounded by the quality of her work he asks to take her out to dinner. While attending a photo shoot, Frank catches the eye of one of Anna's models, a girl name Rita. Using a ruse, he later gains entry to her home. Once inside he completely flips, referring to the bound girl as his mother then proclaiming his undying love before stabbing her through the chest. Frank hasn't finished yet; he mutilates her body and as with all of his other female victims hacks off her scalp.

While on their way to the cinema, he offers to take Anna to visit his mother's grave. Within minutes of him standing aside his mother's grave, Frank's mental state becomes a cause for serious concern. He turns and grabs Anna by the throat, but in the ensuing chase, she fights him off with a shovel and duly makes her escape. As he returns to his mother's grave, he finally succ.u.mbs to his psychosis. He has become the helpless child he once was, now confronted by his mother's abusive corpse. In a tearful state, he makes his way home only to be set upon by the mannequins who have now embodied the women he has recently murdered. They horde around Frank, clinging onto their weapons of choice and in the film's sickening finale violently stab at his stomach, dismember one of his arms and tear his head from his body, causing a visceral effusion of splatter.

The next morning two police detectives, looking to apprehend a murder suspect, force their way into Frank's apartment. They find him lying on his bed, his stomach covered in blood, the result of what looks to be a self-inflicted knife wound. His silent collection of mannequins give nothing away, giving the detectives a chance to take their leave, at which point Frank's eyes begin to open.

William l.u.s.tig's Maniac endorsed both the slasher and splatter phenomena of its day, taking the viewer to a seedy part of New York City witnessed in so many of the period's low-budget features. His grimy take on the Big Apple complimented the degenerate nature of his film; within these seamy environs, the deranged Frank was able to accomplish his killings with unusual finesse, while his director a.s.suredly accentuated the tension leading to the final strike. This adept pacing in those moments before the kill was essential, because this downbeat feature had such an overriding dependency on the precision of its bloodthirsty slaughter. It wasn't until the appearance of Frank's love interest Anna, well over halfway through the story, that Maniac at last acquired a much needed element of depth.

With the focus of his film being so reliant on the intensity of the killing, William l.u.s.tig did himself a huge favour by securing the services of one of the finest talents in the business, special effects genius Tom Savini, who developed a quite remarkable approach to enhancing the credibility of the scalping scenes. While scalping had been quite commonplace in westerns, it had never before been observed in such close detail in a horror movie. The scalpings were indeed graphic but Savini's crowning moment came with his own grisly death while sitting in the front seat of his car, which proved somewhat ironic considering the film was targeted for its vitriolic att.i.tude towards women. The producers, however, were acutely aware of the film's contentious regard for its female cast and as a result never submitted this feature to the MPAA. They could have got into even more trouble if the crew had been discovered on the streets of New York, as they were staging many scenes guerrilla-style without having paid for the necessary permits. The infamous shotgun sequence was but one of these scenes and was filmed in the s.p.a.ce of a single hour.

Joe Spinell planned a sequel, Maniac 2: Mr Robbie, in which he hoped to play the host of a children's television show who had taken to murdering abusive parents. This telling was very similar in concept to The Psychopath (1975) and was probably a step too far; production was delayed on the eight-minute-long promotional video until 1986 when the golden age of the slasher movie was sadly at its end. Spinell was unable to secure the necessary financial backing and so moved on to more work. William l.u.s.tig's career was far from being over; he would continue as a director with his Maniac Cop series and the post-Gulf War slasher Uncle Sam (1997). As well as producing a whole string of doc.u.mentaries, he went on to establish Blue Underground, a company that continues to distribute horror and exploitation cinema. He has never given up hope of remaking his movie, possibly with the help of a French production company.

SOMETHING HAS GONE seriously wrong on the streets of New York; as a woman chases through the darkened streets tailed by a couple of thugs, she is murdered by the man she had looked to save her. Soon after a driver is pulled over by a policeman for ignoring a red light; his girlfriend watches in horror as his throat is slashed open and his lifeless body is hurled through the windscreen. After another chase, a handcuffed felon is left to die lying face down in wet concrete. The killer then vanishes into the night, leaving a city now in a state of panic. City Hall does all it can to a.s.suage the public outcry by playing down these atrocious crimes and Lieutenant Frank McCrae is put in charge of the investigation. The few witnesses to these killings insist the perpetrator was a policeman and very soon suspicion falls on a young officer. Jack Forrest (Bruce Campbell) is summarily placed under arrest, having been framed by the real killer and a mysterious woman phone-caller. The murders lead to a former officer, Cordell (Robert Z'Dar), but every report shows that he was killed in prison, having been wrongfully jailed by his seniors. Somehow, he has returned to the streets to mete out his revenge, but he is also killing the innocent.

Eight years after directing Maniac (1980), Bronx-born William l.u.s.tig returned to the gritty streets of New York to unleash Maniac Cop, a pulp-styled film that was devoid of any underlying pretension, seeking only to entertain. It had been five years since he had directed his last film Vigilante (1983), and by 1988 New York had gone through a major clean up. l.u.s.tig, however, in another of his low-budget features presented a city still plagued by the downbeat atmosphere that had been a key element to the success of so many thrillers from the 1970s. His expert direction, particularly in the more violent encounters with Cordell and the prison flashbacks, would ensure Maniac Cop became another cult success, one that warranted two sequels, Maniac Cop 2 (1990) and Maniac Cop III: Badge of Silence (1993), with a fourth film in the series, sadly without Robert Z'Dar, now in the planning stage. l.u.s.tig's approach perfectly suited Larry Cohen's script, which made clever use of its premise in forcing the urban paranoia that permeated the Big Apple to erupt into frantic hysteria as an officer of the law shamelessly abused his power. Cohen had a considerable track record, having started scripting at the age of seventeen, and had garnered a cult status of his own after working on the hit television series The Invaders. Soon after he had worked his way into the director's chair on several low-budget features including It's Alive (1974) and The Stuff (1985). The imposing figure of Robert Z'Dar had started life as a keyboard player and singer for the Chicago-based rock band Nova Express, a name inspired by the 1964 novel written by William S. Burroughs. Z'Dar has never looked back, and has gone on to enjoy a long career in both film and television.

JACK WEIS'S REMAKE of H. G. Lewis's Blood Feast (1963) begins with a well-dressed man entering a hip nightclub. He meets up with the most "evil" woman in the place and after a brief conversation escorts her to his apartment. Once in the privacy of his home, this intense-looking individual takes her into a room with a view to engaging in something rather "special". When the viewer gets to see the room, it resembles a temple of satanic worship, but this leaves little impression on his female acquaintance. She still doesn't flinch when he enters the room garbed in an elaborate Aztec-styled mask, and happily strips to lie naked on the bed; in her line of trade she's no doubt seen it all. Her host begins to ma.s.sage her body, arousing her into a state of ecstasy before tying her down. He then takes hold of a dagger and stabs her in the hand, for it has taken money for evil means; then she is stabbed through the soles of her feet before being finally disembowelled. Shortly after, we meet the detectives who are a.s.signed to bringing this crazed killer to justice. One of them has a thing for prost.i.tutes. It is he who will put an end to these ritualistic murders, as he chases through the New Orleans Mardi Gras in the hope of bringing down this mad man, who offers his victims to an Aztec G.o.ddess in the belief she will bequeath him G.o.d-like status.

In Weis's telling of Lewis's original story an Aztec high priest takes the place of Fuad, the infamous Egyptian killer, and places the groundbreaking excess of fifteen years past in the unique milieu of low-budget shock movies of the 1970s. The director returned to the Louisiana of his last film, Crypt of Dark Secrets (1976), and blended virtually every ingredient of exploitation the decade had to offer: inept acting, the dis...o...b..at, exotic dancers, wicked hookers, girl fights, nudity, bondage, torture, amusing dialogue and then the requisite blood and guts along with the obligatory disembowelment . While there were killings aplenty, they showed a complete lack of imagination as this s.a.d.i.s.tic murderer adopted the same routine for each of his victims. Mardi Gras Ma.s.sacre has been understandably accused of being a misogynistic piece of trash in its relish for female mutilation with the cast never given the opportunity to redeem themselves. The sleaze factor typically attracted the attention of the DPP when it was released to video in 1982. While it is widely available in the United States, it is yet to see official distribution in the UK. For Weis this would be his last time in the director's chair, just as the golden age of the slasher was about to dawn.

A YOUNG GIRL, LUCIE, is seen escaping from an abandoned warehouse where she has been imprisoned and tortured following her kidnap some time ago. With the authorities unable to identify her captors, she is summarily placed into care. There she meets a young girl named Anna, who learns that Lucie is haunted by the figure of a horribly emaciated woman.

The film jumps forward fifteen years to see Lucie bursting into a family home, brandishing a shotgun, which she engages to send each one of them to the grave. She then contacts Anna to inform her that she has caught up with those who abused her as a child and now needs help to dispose of the bodies. When she meets up with her friend, Anna is plagued by very grave misgivings, fearing that Lucie may have slaughtered a family of innocents. Soon after, Lucie is again accosted by the scarred woman who has tormented her nightmares. Anna watches as her troubled friend fights alone, banging her head against the wall and gashing herself with a knife. Lucie continues in her struggle, pleading with the unseen figure and begging forgiveness for having left her behind all those years ago. Even though she has avenged their maltreatment, she realizes she will never be free of this anguished image and takes a blade to her own throat.

The following day a distraught Anna sets about cleaning the house and after finding a concealed cellar makes a shocking discovery. Hidden in the shadows is a blindfolded woman with a metal contraption riveted into her head. She attempts to free her and cleanse her wounds, but as she does so she is interrupted by a band of strangers, who arrive and shoot the woman. Anna is then hauled away to meet their leader, an elderly woman they call Mademoiselle. The woman is a member of a covert group seeking to discover the truth about life after death using subjects she terms martyrs. These martyrs are tortured in the mistaken belief that their suffering will provide a view into the next life. However, their cruel experimentation has so far failed. Anna is now imprisoned and brutalized. In her suffering she sees Lucie, who tells her she must "let go"; only then will she be free of the fear of pain and death. Anna has progressed further than those who came before her and after surviving being flayed to the point of near death, she whispers the innermost secrets of her ordeal into the Mademoiselle's ear. The old woman now summons the members of the society in what will be a shocking finale.

Pascal Laugier wrote the script for this shocking experience while enduring a fit of deep depression; its bleak landscape attests to his troubled state of mind. Martyrs has been compared to much of the torture p.o.r.n of the past ten years, particularly blockbusters such as Saw (2004) and Hostel (2005). However, this film owes more to the French Extreme Wave of the past decade, which includes cinematic masterpieces such as Sombre (1998), Irreversible (2002), 13 Tzameti (2005), Haute Tension (2003), a L'Interieur (2007) and Frontier(s) (2007), each of which fail to attain the recognition they so truly deserve. These films, along with Martyrs, do not intend to seek merely to entertain with their effusion of visceral nastiness; rather, they indeed evoke a gut reaction but frequently appear distanced from their grisly subject matter. In a similar way to his contemporaries, Laugier challenges the existing boundaries of filmmaking and as those before him steadily pushes them further back. The early part of this feature plays out as an extreme tale of revenge set against an unforgiving backdrop while using a ghostly figure to torment an already deeply disturbed lead character. Then Laugier subtly turns his film, edging between nihilism and a paltry chance of salvation. The torture themes of Saw and Hostel are taken to extremes for these villains are truly detached, seeking only to further their own misguided scientific research. There is nothing in the slightest way of t.i.tillation on show here; rather, the lasting impression is one of sadness. As soon as Anna has been introduced to the Mademoiselle, the narrative becomes dispa.s.sionate, making it so much more disturbing than its predecessors and as with all contentious filmmaking will continue to divide its audience.

Laugier, a young director who owes so much of his inspiration to Dario Argento, is now looking to build on the success of his controversial Martyrs and his earlier terror, Sainte Ange (2004), with an American-produced version of this film, which may not be quite as dark as the original.

BY 1983, THE microwave cooker was becoming increasingly popular in kitchens across the globe; it was only going to be a matter of time before the slasher and splatter generation included them on their inventory of murderous implements. Microwave Ma.s.sacre's princ.i.p.al selling point has been its a.s.sertion to being the worst horror movie of all time,