Doctor X (1932)

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When most people think of a 1930s Hollywood Horror, they think of some drawn-out gothic classic like Dracula, Frankenstein, or The Invisible Man. Well, beyond glitzy stages and novel reworks, filled with mortality-play tales of man’s inner struggle, the 1930s brought us the first works of exploitation cinema by plying its trade to a titillated audience (whilst also ushering in the Hayes Code). Tod Browning’s Freaks shocked audiences by showing disabled people, Erle C. Kenton blended sensuality with cruelty in the Island of Lost Souls, and Michael Curtiz gave us this technicolour body-horror nightmare with Doctor X – a film so ground-breaking and debauched that it got a name check in The Rocky Horror Picture Show!

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Nomads (1986)

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It’s always frustrating when a movie manages to put in all the effort of being a good film, but ends up for far from the mark you thought it could have landed on. Unlike with other films that have been mauled in this column, a lack of talent and a dodgy core concept can’t be blamed for this state of affairs. It simply ends up biting more than it can chew, and becomes less than the sum of its parts.

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Wedding Bells for the Otaku (2017)

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Because it’s always good to go outside of your normal world, for this trip into obscuria we’re having a watch of a Japanese romantic comedy-drama. Based on the 2015 comic series “BL Mangaka Desukedo Kekkon Shitemo Iidesuka” by Haruki Fujimoto, who is also credited at writing the screenplay, Wedding Bells For The Otaku is an hour-long made-for-TV special. Directed by Toshimitsu Chimura, who probably got the job due to working on other nerdy TV series, it’s the kind of show that Japanophiles will probably wax lyrically about for many moons. Well, I’m not writing for them and any of their apologist behaviour, so my advice is that if you ever find this in a bargain-bin you should leave it there. Unless you know a J-Drama obsessive you can up-sell it to.
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The Cars That Ate Paris (1974)

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Titles can be important when building up expectations in movies, so when something is called “The Cars That Ate Paris”, you know it’s not going to be a run-of-the-mill affair. Released in 1974, and mostly funded by the Australian Government, this slice of Ozploitation was directed by Peter Weir, written by Hal and Jim McElroy, and starred Terry Camilleri. Amazingly, all of them went on to have long careers in the industry, rather than forever being known as “those guys that made that film”. Still, George Miller wrote Made Max and Babe, so making the blackest of satires just seems to be a stepping stone to success in that region.
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The Uncanny (1977)

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This film got picked for review because my wife asked me to find something with cats in it. If you don’t think random “is there a film about X?” challenges are a valid way to select your viewing then you really haven’t lived – or, you are one of the lucky few who’s suggested viewing algorithm isn’t a stream of safe choice variations on the timeless classic “this film will fill an hour and a half of your life.” True, it took about twenty minutes of searching, and rejecting a million variations on Cat People to find The Uncanny was even a thing; but that’s only five minutes more than going all the way through Netflix to bung on what it first shilled at you when you turned it on.
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The Beach Girls and The Monster (1965)

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There are some films where you just know the producer hammered two random things together in the hopes that the result would be entertaining. Snakes and planes, sharks and tornadoes, Nazis and any excuse to see them brutalised. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, and sometimes it doesn’t work on a level that just fills you with awe at the majestic beauty of how misshapen and proud the final creation is. There is no way you can convince me that the people behind “Beach Girls And The Monster” knew what they were doing, on any level, as no one could ever intentionally put together such an epic piece of ridiculousness. They just went “people like Beach Girls and Monsters… now go and write that script”.
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Dark Night Of The Scarecrow (1981)

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The “fun” of watching older movies is waiting for the inevitability of what we would consider a car-crash-approach to dealing with sensitive issues. For Dark Night Of The Scarecrow it’s intellectual development disability, a subject that has been variously considered a magical power, something that removes all quality of life, and sign of outright evil at various points in cinema. That a 1981 made-for-tv movie can handle this topic with accuracy and dignity is impressive, and that it’s within the confines of a horror flick, is an outright miracle. It’s also worth noting that whilst this Frank De Felitta outing isn’t exactly the intellectual gore-fest slasher it tries to be, it’s actually quite a good film in its own right.
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RobotJox (1990)

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It seems such a simple concept; meld cold war tensions with a bit of post-apocalyptic dystopia and a whole load of massive robot combat. It has everything a 1990 audience could want: sinister and cynical futurism, the chance for a bit of “USA! USA!” optimism, and the timeless wonder of hundred-foot steel homunculi beating the tar out of each other. Yet somehow what should have been Stuart Gordon’s directorial mainstream breakthrough, after writing Honey, I Shrunk The Kids, became a by-line in his filmography. But was it as bad as the critics made out? Well, two out of three decent acts ain’t bad!!
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From Beyond (1986)

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It’s a truth well accepted that there are three truisms of the works of HP Lovecraft. Firstly, that they were pivotal in creating modern horror and, to a great extent, modern sci-fi. Secondly, that they often show quite how much of a bigoted dickhead he was. And, thirdly, that they shouldn’t be committed to film because he was all about the cosmic horror of what you couldn’t see (and not that he hit on a cheap way of making the reader do all the work). Well, Stuart Gordon (Director) and Jeffery Combs (actor) put paid to that, twice!, with 1985’s Re-Animator and, ridiculously quickly, 1986’s From Beyond. Re-Animator is, justifiably, more known, but From Beyond is more “out there”, plus it’s on Netflix right now and I wanted to use it as the first Trash Or Treasure LIVE!
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Astro Zombies (1968)

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Of the many paths that got me into watching way more dodgy old sci-fi films than is necessarily good for you, a big one was the punk rock band The Misfits. Founded in the late ’70s, and brought up on a steady diet of cheap and cheery shlock from the US TV deregulation and localisations of the late 60’s onward, they were pioneers of the Horror Punk genre. They sang a lot of very fast, very hostile songs that were often odes to the kind of grotty horror their parents had warned them would rot their brains. One of the best tunes (for my money) they ever bashed out was the delightfully nihilistic, anti-social sci-fi murder-cant of “Astro Zombies”. An epic of bile and belligerence, with a singalong section of “Prime directive, exterminate the whole human race”, I had assumed that 1968 film that had inspired it would have been either a marvel of lost outsider art or a delight of bull-dada excess.
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