"You shattered the big ebony phallus! Poor soul! Misery is now your lot!"

It's been a hectic week, mortals. The re-ignited gun debate in the States has everyone at each other's throats, which I love, but has kept me pretty busy. I'm having the throne room remodeled, so the place is a mess. My legion of demons has been doing a hell of a job tormenting the damned, but the screaming, wailing and shrieking in pain and terror have reached a new fever pitch, so it's been hard to concentrate on anything. The racket, if it's not too on-the-nose to say so, has been infernal. 

I'm not complaining. These are good problems to have. I'm just trying to explain the context in which I too hastily chose the movie I'm going to tell you about. 

This week's Thursday Thriller is A Virgin Among the Living Dead.

This 1973 Jesus Franco film is not very good at all. In fact, according to IMDb, Rolf Hahn and Ronald M. Giesen listed it among the worst movies of all time. I didn't think it was quite that bad. It definitely has its moments, but waiting for those moments -- whoof!

It's about a girl named Christina (Christina Von Blanc) who goes to visit family for the reading of her father's will. She arrives just in time for one of her aunts to die. Her Uncle Howard (Paul Muller) plays the piano and has a sexy mistress named Carmence (Carmen Yazalde). Franco himself plays the family's maniac servant Basilio, and he looks almost exactly what you'd expect a guy who makes softcore zombie porn to look like. 

Did I mention this movie is softcore zombie porn? Sorry, the screams of damned are really distracting. The zombies don't really show up until the last 30 minutes or so, but the porn kicks off pretty early. Christina watches Uncle Howard and Carmence having sex, then sleeps in the nude. In the morning she decides to go skinny dipping. 

The first hour kind of drags, but the final act is where everything goes nuts. Zombies climb up out of the ground and chase Christina and sexually assault her, or maybe they don't. Maybe it's all in her head. Maybe it was all in my head. Maybe I was dreaming. It might explain why I had trouble staying awake. 

It's not a total waste. The women are beautiful. You see Uncle Howard's dick. Bruno Nicolai's soundtrack is cool. I just prefer to write about movies you have to see. See this one if you're bored, or not. I'll to do better next week. 

A Virgin Among the Living Dead streams on Shudder and YouTube. 

"They were hung and left for all to witness that witchcraft was forbidden. The crows ate the eyes out of the cadavers."

Let's face it, mortals, negotiating a menage a trois with your lover is a delicate art. It takes a strong foundation of trust and honesty. You have to set boundaries, overcome such hurdles as jealousy and fear of judgment, find a willing third party. For a lot of people, these are dicey waters to navigate.

One misstep and you could alienate your lover. She might decide to jump from a moving train, camp out alone in an abandoned castle and wake up a bunch of undead knights with her transistor radio. On horseback, they will chase her down and bite her to death. So much for your threesome.

This week's Thursday Thriller is Tombs of the Blind Dead.

Unlike a lot of European films of the era, this PG-rated 1972 Armando de Ossorio film keeps its sexual content suggestive rather than explicit, an oversight de Ossorio corrected in the franchise's later films.

A young woman named Virginia (Maria Elena Arpon) sits poolside reading a magazine when she spots Betty (Lone Fleming), an old friend from her school days. What's Betty been up to? She's been making and selling mannequins in a building out by the old church cemetery. Just as they're catching up, Virginia's boyfriend Roger (Cesar Burner) struts up and puts on his blue and white, polka-dotted, ass-length bathrobe.

He looks Betty up and down in her bikini and invites her to go camping with them the next day, despite Virginia's obvious jealousy. Roger's flirtations with Betty escalate on the train, and Virginia storms off. Betty goes to smooth things over and reminds Virginia of their suggested lesbian experience during which the pair sat around in their nighties and giggled at a picture of a bride and groom in the magazine. Betty took on the role of the groom by pulling her hair across her upper lip to simulate a moustache.

Then dumbass Roger interrupts the flashback. Virginia decides to jump off the train. The conductor won't stop, though, because of his deeply held local superstitions.

See, way back during the Crusades, a group called the Knights Templar went to fight, but came back to Europe practicing Eastern magick, committing sacrifices, drinking blood, all that good stuff. They were eventually executed for witchcraft, but Virginia wakes them up from the dead, and they rise from their graves. Corny skeleton hands poke out of crypts, but they're offset by the genuinely creepy soundtrack of chanting. It will give you a chill My favorite move, though, especially in these modern times of jaded horror fans who love to tell you about how over pop scares they are, is when the camera suddenly zooms in on one of the knights in an extreme close-up and the soundtrack goes, "RARGH!"

Roger and Betty eventually circle back on horses to look for Virginia, but they're too late as she's been murdered. They then begin their own investigation into her death. Virgina for her part doesn't stay down long. She gets up off her gurney and attacks the morgue keeper. Later in the movie, after Betty gets suggestedly raped by a smuggler in the cemetery, Virginia drops by to see her at work.

This movie is not too self-aware to literally shake the scary thing in your face and roar at you. It is a zombie movie, but the zombies ride horses, carry swords, and wear crusty capes. They're some of my favorite monsters, and the score by Anton Garcia Abril serves the creepy atmosphere well.

Tombs of the Blind Dead streams on Amazon Prime and YouTube. 

"Maybe you didn't realize, but the whip is for me."

Mortals, can we acknowledge how much I've been leaning on YouTube for movies to review lately? I don't think it's a problem necessarily, but if I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge the volume of weird, old movies Amazon Prime has been amassing lately, particularly in the giallo subgenre -- movies like Black Belly of the Tarantula, Don't Torture a Duckling, and What Have You Done to Solange?, all loaded up with beautiful, gratuitously naked women and erotically charged violence.

It's time to brush up on your Italian or learn how to enable subtitles because this week's Thursday Thriller is my new favorite giallo, The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave.

Emilio Miraglia directed this 1971 film.

Wealthy widower Lord Alan Cunningham (Anthony Steffen) has a habit of hiring prostitutes, taking them back to his castle, telling them to put on a pair of black, thigh-high boots and murdering them in his dungeon. If that sounds kinky to you, you might consider his brother-in-law Albert (Roberto Maldera), who likes to lurk in the shadows and watch, them demand hush money from Cunningham the next morning.

Alan has a type -- curvy redheads. They remind him of his dead wife Evelyn, who once cheated on him in the garden in slow motion while he watched. She later died in childbirth.

Alan metes out his punishment on expensive hookers and his doctor, Richard Timberlane (Giacomo Rossi Stuart) thinks that's unhealthy. He tells Cunningham to forget about Evelyn and re-marry.

But that ass, though...

Cunningham goes to a party with his cousin George (Enzo Tarascio), who's been hooking him up with prostitutes and doesn't seem to think anything strange when they go missing. There,  Cunningham finds himself immediately smitten with a blonde named Gladys (Marina Malfatti). They go back to her place, have sex, and he proposes marriage.

Dr. Timberlane sees nothing wrong with a marriage proposal after a three-hour courtship, and is proud of Alan for finally moving on.

Maybe Gladys is good for Alan, because he turns over a whole new leaf. He's able to have sex without breaking out the branding iron, and you hardly ever see the bullwhip for the rest of the movie, which, I admit, is pretty disappointing.

Just as it all seems to be going so well, Gladys tells Alan she saw one of the maids, a redhead, in the kitchen. That's weird, because he refuses to hire redheads as servants. What's weirder, we learn, is Evelyn's tomb is empty. Then people start getting murdered. Someone feeds Aunt Agatha (Joan C. Davis) to the family's prize hunting foxes.

The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave is a twisty, sexy, fetishistic mystery-thriller with a smattering of the supernatural. It streams on Amazon Prime and YouTube. 

"You must take everything off. Try it once."

Valentine's Day -- a celebration of romantic love, eros. When the winged baby draws his bow, let's fly his arrow and it pierces your heart, you may find yourself helpless, hopeless, your mind flooded with questions.

Is the object of your desire the one for you? Is there anything you can do to make them love you back? Who taught that baby archery?

A Google search will locate for you hundreds of advice blogs and love spells, many of which begin with a ritual bath to remove negative love patterns, align your energies and condition your aura to attract love. I believe this piece of wisdom originated with Redd Foxx.

This particular blog isn't set up to offer love advice, but I can recommend a movie to throw on while you're making out.

This week's Thursday Thriller is The Vampire Lovers.

This 1970 Hammer film, directed by Roy Ward Baker, was based on the 1872 story Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu. It stars Polish actress Ingrid Pitt as a hot, lesbian vampire who has a habit of crashing out in the castles of noble families, seducing their nubile daughter's and slowly draining them of their life's blood. There's also a mysterious, by which I mean barely explained, Man In Black (John Forbes-Robertson) hanging around nearby most of the time.

When the Morton family happens upon a carriage wreck, they take Carmilla into their home. She forms an immediate bond with young Emma, played by the stunning Madeleine Smith. Before long they're frolicking naked around Carmilla's bedroom after her bath.

Then Emma's health goes south. She starts having crazy night terrors and discovers two puncture wounds on her breast. Carmilla covers her tracks by bringing a couple servants under her seductive spell, but she's played this game too many times before and soon Baron Joachim von Hartog (Douglas Wilmer) and General von Spielsdorf (Peter Cushing) come vampire hunting.

This movie's alright. As softcore lesbian vampire erotica goes, it's not as dirty as, say, the work of Jean Rollin, but it might have a broader appeal as it's more competently made. It has a fair amount of female nudity and two decapitations, but the point this week isn't really to pay attention. It's to get your freak on.

The Vampire Lovers streams on YouTube.