ew's 'guilty pleasures:testosterone edition'

want to know why kurt russell was cast in
'GRINDHOUSE'?,then check him out as snake
plissken:an eye-patched bada** on a
suicide mission in a maxximum-security
prison known as manhattan.

in a decade that was wall-to-wall with great car-chase
flicks,this is one of the greatest.
watch and wonder why barry newman didn't become a star.

remember when mel gibson was young and dangerous
instead of middle-age and kinda bananas? no?
check out the import that brought him to america.

sergio leone's first western captures the exact moment
when clint eastwood became a squinting,gunslinging
legend.

the alpha and omega of zombie movies.
george a.romero's splatterfest unleashes
the undead on a pennsylvania shopping mall.

ahhh,new york city in the 70's.
the subway cars were covered with graffiti
and you wouldn't dare step outside without mace.
this candy-colored street gang epic shows you why.

the "italian hitchcock" dario argento,
serves up a knife-wielding lunatic,
italian models in peril and a super-funky
ennio morricone score.
bravissimo.

if you're finished with the bruce lee cannon,
sonny chiba should be next.
he may not be pretty,but he gets the job done...
with extreme prejudice.

after the success of 'JAWS',grind houses were
overrun with schlocky underwater knockoffs.
this one directed by joe dante ('GREMLINS')
& written by john sayles ('LIANNA','LONE STAR'),
is the best of the bunch.

the cadillac of italian zombie films...
which is saying something.
they cranked 'em out like pizzas.
lucio fulci's masterpiece is both
terrifying and hilarious-a zombie
battles a shark!.

if david lynch directed a spaghetti western
and edited it together with THE PASSION OF
THE CHRIST,it might look something like this.
love or hate it,it's a true original.

from the same man later bring you MANIAC COP and
VIGILANTE,the slasher flick is utterly gonzo,
with enough mommy issuses to make norman bates
seem well-adjusted.

SHAFT's richard roundtree was tougher.
SUPER FLY's ron o'neal dressed better.
but DOLEMITE'S rudy ray moore was the
comic everyman of the blaxploitation
genre.

also known as DEATH LINE,this british horror movie
features a derangged serial killer who lives and
lurks in the london underground.

sam peckinpah's most nihilistic film-no small feat-
stars warren oates as a sleazy gringo messing with
the guys on the wrond side of the border

sexploitation aueteur russ meyer was called "king leer".
but his buoyant starlets were harldy shakespearean
talents.
still,it's hard to have more fun watching c***.

HALLOWEEN was the classiest,and FIRDAY THE 13TH had
the best gimmick,but this slasher flick was the most
criminally underappreciated of the genre.

no one combines corsets and classy scares like
england's hammer films.
is it a victorian chamber piece or a genderbending
chiller? you decide.

women-in-prison films are dicey.
while some step over into misogyny,
here's a rare good one the plays it
tongue in cheek.
plus,pam grier sings!.

perhaps the oddest '70s b-movie subgenre was the
campy rash of martial-arts films that slavishly
resurrected the late bruce lee.
it was like the far east version of tupac.