Blood Shack (1971)

This is a weirdie, but not so much a goodie, seeing as how its major pitfall is that the shitty director felt like he didn't have enough material to sustain a fucking mere hour-and-ten goddamn minute movie. So, in between the moderately "interesting" shit (I'm being incredibly generous there) is a bunch of boring filler and inane ranch ownership-related bullshit that roadblocks any potential 'action' for endless periods of time.

A failing B-horror actress moves back to her father's ranch in bum-fuck hicksville wherever that is being tended by a shirtless yahoo who keeps warning people about "the Chooper" (the ridiculous alternate title of the film) that resides in a dilapidated house on the property that was cursed by some Indian natives back in the day. The Chooper, apparently, is a monster that hangs out in the shit-shack and kills anyone who dares enter. And, from the looks of it, the Chooper is legit, though it looks more like a retard in a spandex bodysuit and mache mask with a toy sword when a hippie chick decides to the spend the night alone in the house. Of course, she's killed, and the ranch hand disposes of her body.

This is really the best scene we get involving the Chooper - although there are a few others (the sheriff death was pretty funny) - as the bulk of this movie is repetitive voice-over of the main actress talking about how annoyed she is at a local douche who keeps pestering her about wanting to buy her ranch (this comes up SO fucking much that is becomes almost annoyingly comical) and rodeo footage. Apparently, this movie fell short of the desired run-time needed to constitute a "feature", so the director went back and filmed ten extra minutes of bucking broncos, cattle-roping and pointless rodeo shit to pad it out and - believe me - this shit gets DULL. I mean, how hard would it have been to film a couple more "Chooper" scenes where some dumbasses get sword-hacked in the blood shack? Doesn't seem like it would've cost a fortune to do this. Either way, I kinda dug this one. I know, it's boring and schlocky, but there's a weird... charm to it. Most may not feel this way, but if you're into obscure 70s oddities then... maybe "Blood Shack".

Private House of the SS (1977)

Decent enough 'nazisploit' sleazer from Bruno Mattei (credited, directorially, under one of his many pseudonyms) that keeps things pretty low-key, as far as violence, which is never a positive thing in MY book, but the full-frontal frauleins are kept at an abundance, which rules. 

The premise is suitably simple - a guy is ordered to weed out the traitors among the Hitler SS officials by opening a whorehouse with specially trained, captive girls. He starts off with a group of Nazi generals who - once aroused to the point of thinking solely with their dicks - are prompted to spill their guts on how they REALLY feel about their fuhrer, which is less than 'warm'. So after they're hauled in for treason, sights are set on another SS goon with a penchant for being an especially sadistic motherfucker. Pretty much the same shit here, but by this point, the guy in charge of this operation starts getting a bit nutty, thinking HE is in fact the real fuhrer and shit takes even a harder nosedive when word hits that Hitler is dead and the house of debauchery and conspirator-sifting basically does a mass suicide thang...

So, yeah, plenty of nude broads running around, getting mauled by over-the-top Nazi pervs. Again, not much at all in terms of violence or gore and the last 20-minutes kinda started to drag, I thought. I will, however, give this one props for the whore training montage at the beginning - featuring karate exercises as well as sexual marathons involving fat and/or deformed BDSM freaks and dogs. Good stuff. Also, the main guy's performance is pretty crazy and fun. In all, not the best 'nazisploitation' flick I've come across by any means, but for what it's worth, I enjoyed the majority of it. Most of Bruno Mattei's stuff falls somewhere in the in the middle for me and this is a good example.

Sadistic Tragedy of Blue Rose Mansion 01 (2009)

Some bleak SM material out of the Japanese sleaze underground that is pretty fucking boring, overall. Featured are prolonged, unbroken sequences of a young woman being mostly pierced and sewn - with one endless scene of candle wax-play - all conducted by another woman in a dark, fancy, candlelit setting.

There's really not all that much more to speak of, as this is just one of those weird fetish 'torture porn' (in the truest sense) "films" that are made for a very 'niche' type. Personally, my 'kinks' don't really coincide with this kind of shit (though it may depend on my mood...), so I mainly just seek this kind of thing out for the 'shock value', though, I must say, this one didn't do much except bore me. Everything just goes on way too long - with the aforementioned wax torture, ornaments being threaded into the chick's back, other types of needle piercing and, of course, the big mouth-being-sewn-shut grand finale. The subject of this abuse also reacts much too nonchalantly - to the point where it hardly even seems like torture. Honestly, the version I purchased came with some porn trailers at the end for shit that looked exponentially better than the snooze-fest I had just suffered through - including one (I forget the title) - where a guy ties up his girlfriend in a basement, fills her mouth with thumb tacks and karate kicks her in the throat. Day-um! Anyways, if you're hopelessly turned on by needle-torture, I guarantee you can do better than this shit.

Female Harakiri: Glorious Death (1989)

It appears that an odd genre out of Japan (figure that) of Harakiri films was a thing for a while so I went ahead and picked up a set of six of them just to see for myself. The only examples of this I've seen in the past are "Paradise Lost: Riding Habit Harakiri" (which is featured on the aforementioned set) and the final segment of "Psycho: The Snuff Reels", which was actually pretty memorable. As far as the first film up, here, it's a total fucking snoozer.

A woman is seen gazing pensively at an army uniform for a long time before we see her kneeling in front of a ceremonial Harakiri blade (I presume that's what it was...). She fondles it for a long time, drags the tip across her bare breasts a bit and finally starts slicing into her abdomen for an excruciatingly long time. Then, she writhes on the floor and dies and the shit ends...

Gore and effects-wise, there's not much to speak of, here. Not much as far as entrails spilling or blood splatter (though some) makes this one pretty weak, boring and uneventful, overall. It just drags and really leaves one (me, at least) unenthralled and disappointed.

Asylum of Satan (1972)

I'm kind of a sucker for '70s movies set in mental hospitals and - throw in some Satan for good measure - and you got my attention. "Asylum of Satan" isn't a good film by any stretch of the imagination and maybe I was just in a good mood when I watched it (which is weird considering I watched this sometime around one in the afternoon, stone sober...), but I kind of enjoyed it more than I feel it deserves.

Simple premise involving a woman who wakes up in a funny farm run by a Satanic cult leader who needs her for a sacrifice, all while her fiance is struggling to gain access to the mysteriously impregnable facility. A few of the other handicapped patients are killed off along the way and we round things out with a paper-mache devil creature...

This thing is cheezy all around - from the shitty looking bugs pulled on fishing line, to rubber snakes attacking a blind chick in a swimming pool, horrible looking fake facial hair and the aforementioned homemade Satan monster at the end. At the same time, it's oddly watchable if you're in the mood to not be too impressed and just laugh at something goofy. Moderately recommended to drive-in trash fans.

Bloodrage (1979)

Early on I had relatively high hopes of "Bloodrage" shaping out to be a pretty gritty serial killer joint, but as time wore on I was more let down by how slow and light on kills it was. Looks like Joseph Zito (credited here as Joseph Bigwood - who should've made this a porno with a pseudonym like that) didn't quite hit his stride until a few years later with "The Prowler" and then "Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter".

A sexually embittered young man kills a part-time country prostitute and, after disposing of her body where he's convinced it'll never be found, he moves out to the mean streets of '70s New York where we hear through some very inconsistent inner voice-over monologue that he can continue to kill, undetected, in these dense, scummy urban streets. Meanwhile, a local rural cop and longtime 'john' of the dead hooker goes looking through NYC for her whereabouts, having prior knowledge that she planned on stripping there as the boyish killer goes on angrily murdering young women.

What few kills there were happened to be fairly mean and misogynistic and there's a decent amount of female nudity to keep things rolling along. Also, Lawrence Tierney has a small, random part as an expectedly gruff cop and I really dig anything set in this era of sleazy shithole New York to some degree. Aside from these moderate 'perks', "Bloodrage" is still pretty dull and the 'action' (kills) were too few and far between for my liking. I DID, however, crack up at this things' totally out-of-nowhere and abrupt ending. Kudos for that! Still doesn't make the overall movie worth one's time, hate to say.