Every time we approach year's end I start snarling and slavering like a were-beast in heat at the prospect of recommending ten perfect little films to whichever freaks and geeks will lend me an ear. This year it’s technically twenty juicy morsels, since back in June I preemptively dropped a “Vol. 1” on the assumption I'd watch wayyyyyy too much shit I wanted to discuss for a single list. I was right, so we’re back at it again with the squeakquel. My only rule is that these are films I’ve watched for the first time in 2021’s second half; none of that “wow, Shrek the Third actually bangs for real y’all!” nonsense. Otherwise it’s generally material which, as we say, “gets a little nutty with it,” and stuff that’s typically kind of old because I’m really, really bad about setting my brain to watch current releases. RIP Malignant I really wanted to see you in a theater :(

Actually I watched a lot of new movies this year but none of them interested me enough to crack the top ten. The closest were Titane and the new Venom; Titane wasn't gruesome enough for my tastes and Venom was actually really great but these next ten films were even better. This time I got really self-conscious about the numbered order, so instead I’ve simply listed them alphabetically. It’s sort of an “assemble your own” top ten list - print this out, cut it up, and gift it to the puzzle lover in your life instead of that $30 A24 jigsaw you've got wrapped in the closet.

Bad Girls Go To Hell

I won't attempt to categorize the strange and storied career of exploitation uber-director Doris Wishman; nor will I attempt to pigeonhole her 1965 roughie opus Bad Girls Go To Hell. True the movie is surreal, stilted, and at times so far outside the accepted language of film it could be mistaken for incompetence - but like many of Wishman’s creations it speaks a consistent language nonetheless, and features more ideas in a single hour than some directors can manage for their entire career. It is amateur yet passionate, bizarre yet cohesive, and broadly exploitative yet deeply sympathetic.

Beyond the descriptors, Bad Girls is a very particular brand of mid-century catnip kitsch where big hairdos and contemporary design collide with thoughts on shame and violence and fantasy and feminism, filtered through a by-any-means production style which, for example, finds Wishman herself voicing three separate characters. Whatever the equation, it synthesizes a film which is entertaining despite and also thanks to these disparate elements. You'll know if this is for you when the opening credits roll and all the text fades in about three seconds after it should.

Bloody Muscle Body Builder In Hell

Enthusiasm goes a long way for me, and Bloody Muscle Body Builder In Hell is nothing if not enthusiastic. Raw talent and charisma just ooze out of this Japanese video Evil Dead tribute, an accurate description which nonetheless does disservice to the excess of originality and creative ambition at play here. The camerawork and effects and makeup and jokes are all fantastic, and it's clear everyone had a lot of fun in the process.

I’ll admit Body Builder takes a bit to really get started (as do many amateur SOV productions), but you’re fully hooked by the time a disembodied head is hopping around attached to a severed hand. Cannot recommend enough if you're into video rarities, horror comedies, or just really passionate amateur productions. This is my shortest review on the list but the movie is just plain fun and good! Accept love into your heart because it’s also a perfect Halloween screening for when October rolls around! I’ll admit straight-up that I believe the addition of a bodybuilder is a complete improvement over Mr. Raimi's original vision.

Cruising

Of course I liked the weird-ass gay culture leather bar killer-thriller starring Al Pacino. What do you expect from me? With my only context the considerable controversy culled on release, I was delighted to discover Cruising as a dark, well-directed psychoslasher which trades in the upper echelons of nauseous dread. The strange ambiguity, the queasy blurring of personality, the unpleasant violence and casting of New York’s underground as a blue-tinged dream world…...it all clicks together perfectly for me. Well, maybe not perfectly, but certainly well enough to stick itself deep in my brain beyond the point of retrieval.

As for the actual cruising material? My god! Incredible! How often do you find something in mainstream media which covers this particular scene, this particular time and place with such sympathy and intention? Like Patrick Cowley’s recently unearthed porno records, the film is an indirect document of a moment which almost immediately and tragically ceased to exist. For that alone I love it, but I'm also enamored with how well Cruising balances philosophical and physical elements. Turns out you can craft a horrific film about identity and performance and also include a dick-suck stabbing that sprays cherry-red giallo blood everywhere. The best of both worlds!

The Curse of Kazuo Umezu

I don't know what you'd expect from a late ‘80s/early ‘90s adaptation of two horror manga stories, but The Curse of Kazuo Umezu is essentially perfect. Otherworldly vibes, comtemporary anime aesthetics, unintentional comedy, accidental lesbian subtext, gnarly body horror, and generally weird shit - you really couldn't ask for more squeezed into 43 minutes like this. One story follows a girl who believes her classmate might be a vampire; the other follows a friend group investigating a haunted house. They are short, to the point, and fantastically grotesque, translating mangaka Uzmezu’s dark and dreamlike style stupendously to the screen.

The atmosphere is immaculate. One favorite bit is when the first story cuts away from its gothic weirdo expressionist stylings to find our two main characters just casually sitting in a food court, drinking lemonades or whatever while chill mallsoft city pop rolls in the back. The contrast is absurd and incredible. I really don't have a whole lot else to say here; I just love Curse wholeheartedly and think it's a great watch for fans of Japanese horror across all mediums. Pop this on in front of House and get yourself one hell of a double feature.

Da Hip Hop Witch

I’m still obsessed with Da Hip Hop Witch, bar none the strangest, brain-strainingest film I've seen all year. Birthed in the limbo between found footage horror and rapper hype reel, this bastard child of Blair Witch parodies winds up closer in tone to Inland Empire than Scary Movie; a pre-9/11 New York ouroboros hopelessly lost in its own jumble of mumblecore narrative threads and improvised skits and hip hop artist interviews.

Sometimes it follows the story of a killer “Hip Hop Witch,” and sometimes it does not. Sometimes it picks up with characters who may or may not have actual narrative impetus, and sometimes those people are never seen again. Sometimes the film cuts in what feels like the middle of a scene, sometimes unrelated audio is played over a sequence, sometimes Vanilla Ice gets a tattoo on screen, and sometimes, many times, Eminem interrupts the movie to spin a fragmented, rambling story about how the witch shoved her “basketball fingers” up his ass. I can't properly describe the deranged texture and depth of Da Hip Hop Witch in such limited space, but suffice to say it's the sort of black hole, shot-on-video mind-melter not easily forgotten.

Disembodied

Movies can be about anything you want, and in this case they can be about a goth girl who keeps her brain in a jar because her skull is occupied with a parasite that digests people by shooting fluid from a growth on her cheek. Disembodied, to be frank, blew me the hell away. It’s the kind of shit that keeps me enthusiastic about film; the knowledge that somewhere, out there in the wastes, creations like this simply exist in the same universe as I.

The movie is a methodical banger of lo-fi goopy body horror weirdness which, appropriately, feels completely disembodied from anything I've ever seen. Really powerful vibes resonate throughout; something like camp sci-fi Cronenberg filmed inside an Oingo Boingo music video. Even by that metric, I cannot stress enough how strange and singular and incredible this experience comes across. Sad this is lead actress Anastasia Woolverton's only screen credit, because she's batting one-fucking-thousand with a leather-decked, bug-eyed performance for all the disaffected goth queers of the world. What an odd and fantastic movie. Wow. Wow wow wow!!!

Dogs Don’t Wear Pants

I always assumed this was a sleazy, bondagesploitation psych-thriller, but instead Dogs Don’t Wear Pants is a chilly black dramedy about trauma and addiction with latex and suffocation added for taste. Sort of like Cronenberg’s Crash - it's not really about having sex in the cars, you know?

Not to say Dogs doesn’t take advantage of the framework; there's a great bit of mistress Mona pulling a trash bag across client Juha’s face, which is easily one of my favorite images of the year. Additionally features the only “gore” scene to ever make me watch through my fingers, and an ending so good it occupies permanent space in my brain. I’ll also admit I’ve put this off since 2019 because the poster with Mona in her domme outfit gave me dummy stupid gender envy. Watching it made me want to pull teeth the same way Audition made me want to stick needles in someone. No further comments.

Guinea Pig 6: Mermaid in the Manhole

My familiarity with Hideshi Hino comes through his lurid and disquieting horror manga work, but keyed-in purveyors of the slimy underground will know him as orchestrator of the infamous Guinea Pig films. Their reputation precedes them, at least regarding Mermaid in the Manhole. What I expected was the kind of nasty, edgy gore-waggling which typically leaves a bad taste in my mouth; what I got instead was…...still a totally gross splatterfest, but one which was far more contemplative and considered than I had been led to believe.

Mermaid goes over tremendously, as Hino marries his grotesque visual style to a yearning, tragic fairytale of loss and letting go. As the memories and passions of yesteryear slip away, so too does the flesh and body, rendered here in technicolor pustules and stripped skin and fetid worms and all other manner of unpleasantries. To be sure, it's the nastiest, foulest organ-melt visuals you're like to see outside something like Dead Alive or Street Trash. If you're willing to stick your hands in though, you'll discover something worth experiencing.

Messiah of Evil

Truly like no other. Euro-horror crashing ashore California with all the gloom and doom of Cthulhu making landfall. Immediately locks in a vibe and just cranks it up over and over until the whole thing collapses under paranoia and darkness and weird ambient dread. The mood is rancid, the kills are unreal, and frankly I'm just astounded that it feels so singular and yet so familiar.

Impossible to watch Messiah of Evil and not trace psychic connections between other works - Argento, Carpenter, Romero, Lynch, Mort Garson's occult albums, Silent Hill, even Halloween III for god's sake - all bubbling up and around this nihilistic American take on Italian style, with '70s fashion and rocky beaches and burbly West Coast Moog work blanketing the atmosphere in an uber-distinct mid-century Golden State death shroud. Calling it "Californian Suspiria" is probably reductive but certainly accurate; I can't think of anything else made in America that gets anywhere near this particular vibe. Loses points for some weird sex stuff! Otherwise Messiah is a certified cosmic horror banger!!

Saw VI

I told myself I wouldn't put any Saw movies on these lists, but look. I've watched the series fully three times this year and Saw VI is an absolute banger. Like Resident Evil: Retribution, it's the point where a franchise’s disparate elements finally pop and fizz in harmony, alchemizing a delectable cocktail which retroactively justifies sitting through a few bad films to get there.

It turns out when you strip away the pro-cop bullshit and focus on the best parts of your franchise - the hammy villains, the cool traps, the up-its-own-ass soap opera narrative - you get something really special. I’ll admit you need a healthy knowledge of #Sawlore to truly savor the flavor, but if you buy into the bullshit then this movie will knock you on your ass like none other. Even watched alone it's an obscenely entertaining movie for folks who enjoy scenery mastication, absurd dismemberment, and truly top-shelf stupid-genius storytelling. Highly recommended.

Whew! We love movies, don't we folks? Hope 2022 finds you cozy and safe and well-prepared to watch even more exciting/wild/truly stupid films.

Morgan’s Top Ten Not-Boring Films of 2021 (Vol. 2)