a few suggestions for zee grade viewing madness over crimbo!

[AshNotTheHousewaresOne]

if you're anything like us you enjoy a wee bit of bad taste tat over the crimbo holidays, those 'guilty pleasure' movies you hate yourself for liking.....or maybe youre a pyschotronic virgin who fancies deliving into the weird world o' mondo mayhem?....anyways i thought i'd post a few reviews for you to recommend some classics if anyones interested....i'll start as i mean to go on:

'Prey'
1977, dir: Norman J. Warren
cast: Barry Stokes, Sally Faulkner, Gloria Annen

The day after a weird green light is seen in the English sky, a strange, polo necked young man stops by at the country home of two foxy lesbians.....It turns out the man is a cat nosed 'alien' with a hunger for flesh and a nice line in Burtons 'action slacks'.

When a film's credits include the names Norman J. Warren, Terry Marcel (director of the Legendary 'Hawk The Slayer'), Cyberman stomping sixties strumpet Sally Faulkner and Max Cuff you know you're getting something special...and in the case of 'Prey' they truly deliver. The isolated locations (actually just ONE location, the splendidly imposing country house) and the sparsely populated cast work to make this movie an uncomfortable powder keg of lustful emotions, strange undercurrents and disapproving looks ready to explode at any moment...add to this mix a talking parrot, Gloria Annen's incredibly sexy pair of greyish, stretch polkadot knickers, a cake with a tiny iced fox on it and Sally Faulkner's vertigo inducing portrayl of a trackie sporting mad dyke with a flick knife and you're onto a winner. It's like a care in the community panto directed by David Lynch, and you can't get higher praise than that!....The tone of the movie veers wildly from sinster to bizarre to bizzarely sinister via 'laugh now!' (both intentional and otherwise) before appearing to peak with Barry Stokes dragged up like a really butch Liza Minelli impersonator gazing sexily at Sally Faulkner whilst really bad MOR plays in the background. Loudly. Barry's 'alien' make-up borders on genius, imagine a kiddie facepainted at a funfair as a cat with an Elvis wig plonked on his head with pointy orange peel teeth launching himself at a garden bush....Then, just when you think the surprises can't get any madder Barry falls into a muddly lake then screams.....the following rescue is unparalleled in the 'what the fuck?' stakes....the cast roll about in mud for what seems like 4 hours in slow motion to a farting, plonking radiophonic score.....films don't get much better than this.

I gotta see this now!

it's available as part of anchor bay's 'norman j. warren boxset, miljee.....the set also features:

'Inseminoid' (aka Horror Planet)
1981, dir: Norman J. Warren
cast: Judy Geeson, Jennifer Ashley, Stephanie Beacham, Steven Grives, Victoria Tennant, Kevin O'Shea.

A group of 'space archaeologists' are threatened after one of their number is impregnated by a big grasshopper......Understandably this causes her to go a bit mental and start hunting them down one by one.....which is nice, if not a little extreme.

Norman J. Warren does a bloodier, bad taste Brit version of 'Alien' on a budget of £12.50 (and gets banned in Iceland for his trouble). Ineptly made, hideously contrived but incredibly entertaining....'Inseminoid' shows what space exploration would be like if it were run by Strathclyde Passenger Transport; Whereas the Yanks have shiny rockets, jetpacks and 'lasers', the British archaeology team show here have buckets and spades, 'Kwik Fit' overalls and a chainsaw(?) amongst their equipment.....oh, and big 80's hair. The film can barely stretch to lighting let alone an FX budget, which actually works in its favour, giving the film a frantic, frayed edged realism and what it lacks in polish it makes up for with bloody violence, a strong cast, Judy Geeson getting sweatier and sexier the more 'nerves shot to f*ck' her character gets and a balloon headed, poppy eyed Earthgirl molesting monster......even the (less annoying yet suprisingly more plinky and farty) minimalist electronic score is an asset (Warren originally favoured a 'classic' orchestral sound but lack of cash made him settle for John Scott's Radiophonic Workshop inspired tinklings).....it truely has something for everyone....and if that hasn't convinced you, try to think how many other films so a fairly famous British actress spread-eagled on a pooltable getting impregnated by an alien using a length of hosepipe, washing up liquid and green painted freerange eggs?.
Buy it now and thank me later.