THE ISLAND OF DR MOREAU (1977)

Director: Don Sharp.  Cast: Burt Lancaster, Michael York, Barbara Carrera

Poor H.G. Wells takes another hiding from the moviemakers at AIP. Michael York is washed up on the shores of the titular landmass where Burt Lancaster (as Dr Moreau) is shooting up animals and turning them into people. He then shoots up Michael York and turns him into an animal.

This hilarious remake of Island of Lost Souls features a very grumpy Lancaster, Michael York shouting a lot and flashing his nipples and a bunch of guys in rubber animal masks running around the jungle and wrestling cows and tigers.

THE VISITOR (1979)

Director: Guilio Paradisi. Cast: John Huston, Shelley Winters, Glenn Ford

A little girl is possessed by an evil entity called Sateen (which I always thought was a sheet fabric) and becomes the focus of a battle between good and evil as represented by John Huston (playing an angel) and a bunch of nasty businessmen who run a basketball team. This completely nonsensical Italian Omen rip-off is a total trip featuring weird murders, exploding basketballs, alien abductions, a wild soundtrack and a climactic killer pigeon attack. The star-studded (and embarrassed) cast includes Shelley Winters as a spiritual-singing nanny and Franco Nero in a cameo turn as Jesus. From the people who brought you Tentacles. Be warned!

FOXY BROWN (1974)

Director: Jack Hill. Cast: Pam Grier, Antonio Fargas, Kathryn Loder, Sid Haig

Don’t mess around with Foxy Brown. She’s the meanest chick in town – especially if you’re one of the drug dealers who killed her boyfriend. Blaxploitation queen Pam Grier hits the revenge trail (again) and whitey’s ass gets one hell of a kicking in this action-packed entertainment that features excellent 70’s fashion statements, a great soundtrack, lots of violence, car stunts, punch ups and, of course, boobs. Pam is in great form, infiltrating a call girl ring, brawling in a lesbian bar and running down the bad guys with a plane, all the while sporting an Afro that could block out the sun. Kathryn Loder is fearsomely camp as the villain and there’s a finale you’ll never forget – especially if you’re a guy. Nearly everyone is dead at the end.

SHEBA BABY (1975)

Director: William Girdler. Cast: Pam Grier, Austin Stoker, D’Urville Martin

Vengeance-junkie Pam Grier is at it again, this time as private investigator Sheba Shayne. When the mob rubs out her nice old dad, Pam swings into action, shooting and karate chopping everyone in sight, starting catfights and tearing around on a jet ski armed with a spear gun. Shot in glorious Louisville, Kentucky, where everyone walks around to the sound of whacka-whacka guitars, this Blaxploitation bubblegum has a typically enthusiastic performance from Pam but the supporting cast does more bad acting than Raquel Welch did in an entire career.

HOW TO STUFF A WILD BIKINI (1965)

Director: William Asher. Cast: Frankie Avalon, Annette Funciello, Mickey Rooney

A wild bikini isn’t the only thing that’s stuffed about this movie. Frankie’s making out with native girls in Tahiti and, to make sure Annette isn’t up to similar mischief, he sends a magical pelican to spy on her. This awful beach party movie has bikinis, board shorts and bad comedy galore with absolutely atrocious songs (one of them sung by Eric Von Zipper) and Buster Keaton playing a Polynesian medicine man called Bwana. Watch out for the “hilarious” motorcycle race climax!

THE BRAIN EATERS (1958)

Director: Bruno VeSota. Cast: Edwin Nelson, Alan Frost, Jack Hill, Joanna Lee

Brain-sucking aliens from the centre of the earth, invade Riverdale, Illinois, and begin turning the locals into mindless zombies. Can intrepid scientist Paul Kitteridge put a stop to their evil plan? This wonderfully bad 50’s sci-fi has aliens that look like fluffy slippers (with pipe-cleaners for antennae) and are lorded over by Leonard Nimoy in a Santa Claus costume! Awful performances abound with Lee (soon to find immortality in Plan 9 From Outer Space) proving just as vacant after her brains are sucked out as she was before.

THE PEOPLE THAT TIME FORGOT (1977)

​Director: Kevin Connor. Cast: Patrick Wayne, Sarah Douglas, Thorley Waters

In this rollicking sequel, a band of intrepid adventurers return to The Land That Time Forgot (luckily someone remembered where it was) to rescue missing-in-action hero Doug McClure! En route they encounter a bunch of snotty-nosed plasticine dinosaurs, dogfight a pterodactyl, meet a cave girl with big boobs and are captured by “oogah-boogah” type natives who want to throw the ladies into a volcano. Featuring lots of cheesy matte paintings, explosions, long walks and a big green fat man villain.

COFFY (1973)

Director: Jack Hill. Cast: Pam Grier, Robert DoQui, Alan Arbus, Sid Haig

Afro-American action queen Pam Grier is COFFY and she’ll CREAM you! When her little sister gets hooked on the junk, Pam becomes a one-woman war against drugs and the dealers start dying. This sensational entertainment features fabulous 70’s fashions, a cocktail party catfight (during which all the ladies’ tops come off), Sid Haig acting up and Cinema Fiasco’s favourite actress gettin’ sexy and kickin’ butt. Lots of action, swearing and boobs and some of the severest testicular separation ever put on screen. This is the kind of junk everyone should be hooked on.

THE ANGRY RED PLANET (1959)

​Director: Ib Melchior. Cast: Gerald Mohr, Nora Hayden, Les Tremayne

Astronauts arrive on Mars to find everything is really red and the locals are really ANGRY! They encounter a man-eating planet, a rat-bat-spider-crab monster, a giant amphibious amoeba and a three-eyed Martian who tells them to go away and never come back. Lovable low budget nonsense with expedition leader Mohr sleazing all over Hayden who wears perfect 50’s make-up that never smudges once. NB: although scientific advances have reduced food to capsule form, the team still collates their findings on a clipboard. There’s lots of stock footage to cherish as well.

EARTH VS THE SPIDER (1958)

Director: Bert I. Gordon. Cast: Ed Kemmer, June Kenney, Eugene Persson

An enormous spider terrorizes a small town (as opposed to the entire Earth) in this hoot and a half from Cinema Fiasco’s favourite director Bert I. Gordon. While searching for her missing dad, teenager Carol Flynn discovers an enormous horrible hairy spider that lives in a cave and sucks people’s juices out. Incapacitated by DDT, the spider is revived by a rock and roll band – “It’s the devil’s music” – and goes on the rampage. Featuring Bert’s trademark cheesy special effects and thirty year old adolescents, there’s lots of running and screaming and a great moment when the spider eats the high school janitor.

THE GHOST IN THE INVISIBLE BIKINI (1966)

Director: Don Weis. Cast: Tommy Kirk, Deborah Walley, Boris Karloff

This has got to be one of the weirdest beach party movies ever and not just because Frankie and Annette aren’t in it. Boris Karloff is a corpse with 24 hours to perform a good deed or else his spirit won’t get into heaven. Susan Hart, in the invisible bikini, is on hand to help. In the meantime, Nancy Sinatra groans out a song called “Geronimo”, Tommy Kirk gets into bed with another boy, a guy in a gorilla suit goes on the rampage and everyone does the twist by the pool. A crazy entertainment featuring awful songs and the comedy of banging your head elevated to new heights.

DR GOLDFOOT AND THE BIKINI MACHINE (1965)

Director: Norman Taurog. Cast: Vincent Price, Frankie Avalon, Dwayne Hickman

Mad scientist Dr Goldfoot (Price) has created an army of bikini-clad fembots with which he plans to take over the world and only Frankie Avalon and Dobie Gillis can stop him. A great bad comedy featuring fabulous 60’s fashions, go-go dancing, hot chicks in bikinis, a hilarious chase sequence and a cool title song by The Supremes, this one of the campiest things I’ve ever seen - and, baby, I’ve been around!

BURNT OFFERINGS (1976)

Director: Dan Curtis, Cast: Karen Black, Oliver Reed, Bette Davis, Burgess Meredith

Karen Black (the greatest actress of all time) and Oliver Reed rent a spooky old house from two nutcases who leave their weird old mother in the attic and forget to mention the killer swimming pool. Once moved in, everyone has a bad acting competition, which Bette Davis wins, thanks to the best heart attack acting ever. The climax is hilarious.

THE VAMPIRE LOVERS (1970)

Director: Roy Ward Baker. Cast: Ingrid Pitt, Peter Cushing, Madeleine Smith

In this Hammer Horror heavy-breather, a lesbian vampire (Pitt) moves into the home of a stuffy general and begins nibbling the norks of the household’s hot honeys. Features all the regulation vampire trimmings, such as crucifixes and garlic, and lots and lots of boobs! Phwoar!!!! A gloriously desperate attempt by Hammer to get with it, this has a bevy of beautiful babes (who have a terrible time keeping their clothes on), plenty of gory goings-on and a great cast taking the whole thing very seriously. I couldn’t and was all the happier for it. 

AT THE EARTH’S CORE (1976)

Director: Kevin Connor. Cast: Doug McClure, Peter Cushing, Caroline Munro

The ever-heroic McClure and dotty scientist Cushing travel to the Earth’s core (in a giant drill!) where they discover a race of prehistoric people (all of whom speak excellent English) under the control of telepathic pterodactyls! Caroline plays a scantily clad native girl and the magnificently unconvincing dinosaurs are portrayed by a bunch of guys in rubber suits. The wigs worn by the natives are a special treat.

FRIDAY FOSTER (1975)

Director: Arthur Marks. Cast: Pam Grier, Yaphet Kotto, Eartha Kitt

Pam Grier is Friday Foster, fashion photographer and undercover operative, in one of the Blaxploitation queen’s goofiest outings. Someone is out to kill America’s black leaders and Friday teams up with a private investigator to kick some assassin ass! This totally absurd entertainment features a fabulous 70’s fashion parade, screaming car chases, Kitt at her campest and Mr Magoo Jim Backus as a white supremacist villain. 

METEOR (1979)

Director: Ronald Neame. Cast: Sean Connery, Natalie Wood, Brian Keith, Karl Malden

A giant meteor heads toward Earth and the planet is doomed unless the Americans and Russians can find a way to work together and destroy. Depicting the destruction of St Moritz, Hong Kong and New York City in lurid detail, this terrible disaster movie features an all-star - not to mention desperate - cast going head-to-head with pages of dreadful dialogue and a giant meteor that looks like an old potato shot in extreme close-up.

BAT PEOPLE (1974)

Director: Jeremy Jameson. Cast: Stewart Moss, Marianne McAndrew, Michael Pataki

A bat bites Dr John Beck during a spot of spelunking and he turns into a hideous bat person. Listed on IMDB as the 49th worst movie ever made, this is really awful but hilariously funny with bat-on-a-string special effects, reams of National Geographic stock footage and Moss doing the best waking-up-from-a-nightmare acting ever. Best dialogue: “It took two strong men and a boy to get it on.”

SKYJACKED (1972)

Director: John Guillermin. Cast: Charlton Heston, Yvette Mimieux, James Brolin

Charlton Heston loads a bunch of Hollywood has-beens and 70’s celebrities onto a 747 bound for Minneapolis, little realizing that one of the passengers is an insane Vietnam vet (hammed to perfection by Brolin). Soon the plane is headed for Moscow, everyone starts having flashbacks and a woman gives birth to the cleanest baby ever born. This hilarious disaster movie has daft characters aplenty including Rosey Grier as a hulking jazz cellist. 

​Oscar-winner Charlton Heston

BLACK MAMA WHITE MAMA (1973)

Director: Eddie Romero. Cast: Pam Grier, Margaret Markov, Sid Haig

Black Mama (Grier) and White Mama (Markov) are slung into a Filipino women’s prison where they quickly discover they hate each other. It’s ironic then, that when they escape, they’re handcuffed together! This great women-in-prison romp has catfights, shoot-outs, a shower scene (featuring boobs and an ogling lesbian warden) and an excellent sequence with Pam and Marg disguised as nuns.