1) I Eat Your Grave! (Sergio Lorenzo, 1976)
If “Once, Twice, Three Times I Kill” is Giallos’s Citizen Kane, then surely Lorenzo’s “I Eat Your Grave” is it’s Magnificent Ambersons. Like Orson Welles, Lorenzo’s lesser known follow-up was butchered, both literally and metaphorically, by his producer Klaus.
Clocking in at over 19 hours, Lorenzo’s masterpiece features Pachinko Robinson as civil servant Hatvil Unger who, while investigating who has stolen his wife, finds himself trapped in a dark netherworld of intrigue, murder and despair. Sadly the original soundtrack, like Lorenzo himself, is presumed dead.
2) Death Mountain (Karl Hurwitz, 1980)
Like many of the copycats of George Romero’s Dead series, Death Mountain was initially ignored by critics and audiences alike. It was only in the late 1990s, after it was accidentally screened on Channel 5 on a Sunday afternoon, that it began to gain a cult following.
Featuring Thom Yorke in an early role, Death Mountain presents a dark apocalyptic nightmare in which dead cats return from the dead and stalk their previous masters. Sadly, the original opening scene – featuring 3 Hitlers on their death beds – has been lost, though the European cut does feature a scene with a robot in.
3) My Mother Is A Teen Aged Monster! (Alfred Oleg, 1956)
After being cursed by carnival dentist Roger Halloway, down-to-earth housewife is transformed into a 17-year-old fan of rock-and-roll music and eating corpses in this mid-century shocker.
The film, starring anonymous, so shocked 50s America that is was banned and hastily recut as the more well-known My Mother Disappeared For A Week.
Oleg’s career never really recovered, and his last credited directing job happened soon after.
4) SpikeFace Assassin (Clive Axel & Yuki Yakamoto, 1990)
Predating the Playstation by 5 years, SpikeFace Assassin combines the twin joys of that guy with the Spikey Face from Hellraiser with being a ninja. Devised by the twin minds of cyberpunk heros Clive Axel and his alter-ego Yuki Yakamoto, the film epitomises the 1990s in a way that has not been seen before or since (the 1990s).
5) Line 20: Goto Death (Everead Kalede, 1988)
After a chance meeting with a spooky travelling hobo games developer, 19-year-old geek Gavin Humbrell gets drawn into a death-related text adventure. If he reaches the end, his prize is success with girls; if he dies – he really dies.
This incredibly authentic computer-related thriller featured a 20 minute title sequence and a deliberately faulty batch of reels that never loaded.
6) Man slices another man’s face off (unknown, 1898)
This film was found buried in a box in the back of a creepy house.
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