Habit

1996 | Director: Larry Fessenden | American | IMDB

Sam is an alcoholic down on his luck. His father recently passed away and his girlfriend just broke up with him. At a friends Halloween party he runs into Anna, and finds solace in her arms. After several highly sexual encounters, Sam slowly starts to believe that she may in fact be a vampire, draining him of not only his blood, but his soul.

This movie is a starkly original, very realistic take on the classic vampire tale. This movie feels very personal and plays as an allegory for any number of relationships. Larry Fessenden directed, wrote, edited, mixed and starred in this film, which is what gives it its air of uniqueness. While its blatantly obvious to the viewer that Anna is a vampire, Sam naturally takes a long time to reach this conclusion. This combined with the subdued camera work, the underplayed acting and the slow burn pace of the movie make Habit feel very real and provide an air of normalcy. For anyone interested in a vampire movie with a take on the genre as unique as Let The Right One In, this is well worth checking out.

Posrednik

1990 | Director: Vladimir Potapov | Russian | IMDB

In a forest not far from a small provincial Soviet town, falls a black sphere of extraterrestrial origin. An alien force posseses the minds of those it comes in contact with, suppressing their will and slowly infiltrating the local community. A large radio telescope outside town is its target, a means of signalling a mass invasion of Earth...

This movie originally premiered on Soviet TV in 3 parts, which when watched together add up to an epic three and a half hours of brilliance. It's basically a very simple body snatchers plot presented in a very stylish manner. Every single shot in this film is exquisitely framed and heavily feature muted sepia tones, with occasional dollops of bright red. The shots are usually very long and often in slow motion, accompanied by a very reverberated sparse soundtrack, with very little dialogue at all. All of this adds up to create an atmosphere so thick you can carve it. This one is pretty hard to track down but is available on various small corners of the internet, with subs available at opensubtitles.org. If you enjoy very slow paced, moody features, watching this is worth the hunt.

Felidae

1994 | Director: Michael Schaack | German | IMDB

After moving to a new town, Francis the cat discovers that someone in his new neighborhood is brutally killing cats in a state of sexual arousal. With the aid of some newly found friends, he sets out to solve the murders, and gets caught up in a dark world full of secrets, cult worship and animal experimentation.

Do not be decieved by the child friendly look of the film, this is ultra violent, complex noir at its finest. Its utterly bizzare, i have no idea who this movies intended audience is. The very nicely drawn and animated talking cartoon cats have a very 70's Disney feel to them, but the plot and subject matter is so mature. You have foul language, dark opressive themes, unbelievable levels of violence (seriously, I'm talking Fulci levels) and even an explicit sex scene. It also has clues to what is happening presented to Francis in surreal nightmares. The plot has a surprising depth to it and keeps you guessing through out, and the characters are colorful staples in the noir genre. I'm really bummed that I can't find a subtitled version of this, as the American dub is pretty poor, and the original voice cast features the likes of Mario Adorf. Despite this its still worth tracking down, you will never see a another movie like it.

Yi boh lai beng duk a.k.a Ebola Syndrome

1996 | Director: Herman Yau | Chinese | IMDB

This movie follows Kai San, A psychopathic loser wanted for committing a triple homicide ten years ago in Hong Kong. Now hiding out in South Africa, he works a job at a restaurant where he has to do all of the tasks nobody else wants to. One day on an outing to buy cheap pigs from a Zulu tribe, he sees a topless tribal woman pass out by a river bed. He decides to try and help her, but after he realizes that “her tits are huge”, he rapes her instead. From this he contracts the Ebola virus, sending him on a murderous and infectious rampage.

This movie has everything you want from an exploitation flick. Inventive gore, explicit rape and sex scenes, and even a man fucking raw meat. Its so mean and exploitative that if I didn’t know any better, I would have thought this was from the 70’s. In fact its so over the top that its almost comical. Even though its not the type of film you would demand it from, the cinematography and acting are solid, and the characters are colorful and well rounded (some of the girls are particularly "well rounded" if you catch my drift). Most films this trashy and despicable are very poorly made and have little to no effort put into the plot, but this film has a very serviceable story. It kinda slows down a bit towards the end, but its still well worth a watch, especially if you’re a fan of mindless exploitation.

Ghost in the Machine

1993 | Director: Rachel Talalay | American | IMDB

A serial killer is on the loose who finds his victims from stolen address books. He goes after a single mother and her son, but on the way to their house he loses control of his car in a storm and crashes. Getting a CAT scan at the hospital, lightning from the storm surges through the building, converting his soul into electrical energy. He continues on his killing rampage, possessing household goods and the like to murder his victims.

Now, this movie has a great deal of flaws, but its so cheesy and fun. It definitely falls in the “so bad it’s good” category. It's filled with all of this "futuristic technology" which just charms the pants off of me. I don’t know whether its just because the standards were different back then, but i was really surprised by how competent the cinematography was. Some of the deaths are pretty awesome too, including an infamous microwave scene that is as ridiculous as it is awesome. At times it feels like a predecessor to the Final Destination series, drawing out anticipation for inventive deaths (one death sequence in particular feels very much like Final Destination, and is utterly hilarious and unforeseeable.) Its been SLAMMED on imdb, but i think if films as poorly made as Pieces or the first Friday 13th can be considered great, there is no reason that this couldn’t be either.