A tripped-out British TV show from the 70s. Think a AA battery powered Alice In Wonderland, featuring a little lad (Jamie) and his per dog Wordsworth. The show told the stories of Jamie and Wordsworth's adventures in Cuckoo Land, where they would go after lights out, by way of his magic torch. There were two very memorable things about the TV show, that it was really trippy and it had a rocking theme tune. Even to this day, some nearly 40 years after it was first shown, I still find myself singing the theme tune randomly to myself.

The show first ran from 1976-1979, and was repeated during the 1980s, on ITV in a lunchtime slot.

The series was created by Cosgrove Hall, who would go on to produce the kids cartoons Dangermouse and Count Duckula. The series was written and narrated by Brian Trueman, who both wrote and narrated a number of children's TV shows during the 70s and 80s, including the weird Chorlton And The Wheelies. The awesome theme music was written by Joe Griffiths, who also did the theme tune for Chorlton And The Wheelies.

Also known as The Rejuvenator, it's a 1988 horror film, inspired partly by The Wasp Woman (1959), and has a nod towards Re-animator (1985), a sprinkling of Sunset Boulevard (1950) and a cheeky bit of Cronenberg, thrown in for good measure. All making for classic horror of the low-budget straight-to-video era of the 80s.

In a variation on the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde story, an ageing actress funds a scientist to develop a serum for eternal youth. The serum is extracted from the brains of dead bodies, and when injected with it, the side-effect is that the actress turns into a monster with a taste for brains. She becomes more and more monstrous, leading to a brilliant final transformation scene at the end of the film.

There's plenty of over-the-top gore, to keep fans happy, in what is an above-average horror flick. But has all the right elements that anyone who loves 80s horror would expect. Cheesy, a bit tacky, big hair and shoulder pads, and the all female rock band Poison Dolly's.

The film was the main actress Vivian Lanko's  début movie. She would go on to have minor roles in only two other movies. The cheesy horror flick Refrigerator (1991) and the drama Simple Men (1992). Lead actor of Rejuvenatrix, John MacKay, also appeared in the movie Simple Men.

*** Spoiler Alert *** The YouTube clip is of the final scene of the movie. But well worth watching, if you can't be bothered to dig out the whole movie.

Mild-mannered robot private detective Dick Spanner was the suitably square-jawed titular hero of Dick Spanner, P.I., a tongue-in-cheek British series produced the Thunderbirds creator Gerry Anderson. The series was made up 22, 6 minute episodes, that followed two story arcs, "The Case Of The Human Cannonball" and "The Case Of The Maltese Parrot". The show parodied hard-boiled detective noire movies. Set in a highly stylized, futuristic universe, the tongue-in-cheek show has Dick cracking jokes as he's immersed in the bizarre mysteries. 

The series was created, co-written and directed by Terry Adlam, who worked on the special effects for the Anderson series Terrahawks in the 1980s. The voice of Dick Spanner, was provided by Canadian actor Shane Rimmer, who was the  voice of Scott Tracy in the most famous Anderson series of the 1960s, Thunderbirds. Another piece of trivia about Rimmer is that he has appeared as a bit-part actor in more James Bond movies than any other actor.

Newton the robot, which appeared in 1989, was manufactured by SynPet. Advertised as a "practical" personal robot, it's a bit of a mystery exactly what Newton was, part from a PC on wheels. A bad R2-D2 rip-off, or a Metal Mickey without arms or the sense of humour. Newton was also an answering machine and a smoke detector. As far as being a "robot", Newton had motion sensors and could move around "autonomously" on "plush carpet" and even on a "5 degree incline". The best part of Newton was the cheesy 80s promo video for him. Check it out below.

Kids TV: Metal Mickey (1980 - 1983) - Designed by Johnny Edwards, Metal Mickey was a robot that got his own prime-time UK TV show in the 1980s. Directed by Mickey Dolenz of The Monkees.

Best Of British: Comic Book Robots - A look at the comic book history of the UK through the eyes of robots. From Robot Archie and Brassneck, to the robots of 2000 AD and C+VG.

Randy Retro Robot Romeos - Redressing the romantic balance, with Weird Retro's romp through the Romeos of the robot world. For all the ladies who like a love-bot.

I'm sure the question has come up time and time again among horror fans, especially fans of slasher movies, which killer has the highest body count. Now obviously it depends on the number of movies that the killer has appeared in. The more movies, the more chance to slaughter. But even taking that into account, the winner by a long way it would seem is Jason Voorhees of the Friday the 13th franchise. Now there are a number of claims on the kills Jason has made, ranging from an over-the-top 300+ to a more conservative 146. And without personally actually watching all 12 movies. Although obviously you would discount the first and last movies, as in the first it's Jason's mother that does the killing, and the last movie is a reboot, so isn't part of the original series. Some people count the last movie in Jason's kill list, but I feel it would be wrong to do so. So, that said, based on research I've managed to do, this is Jason's kill tally.

Working on a piece about bad rip-off toys (usually from China), I came across these Titanic themed toys. Now back in the 1980s, hand held LCD games were all the rage. But this beauty came out to cash-in on the success of the Titanic movie in 1997. The idea of the game was to avoid the icebergs, by pressing left or right. Surely the point of the game would have been better if you had to steer the ship into the nearest iceberg, and end it all as quickly as possible.

But no, you had to gain enough points so that "the lovers" can have dinner together, and continue to dodge the icebergs so that they can go "dancing on the deck". Assuming after that, you aim the the Titanic head-long into an iceberg, at which point it transforms into a giant robot and flies away. Thus saving the passengers from a fate worse than becoming a bad rip-off toys.

Just when you thought they couldn't make anything else into a Transformer... We present Titanic-Bot. He floats in your bath, he avoids icebergs, he turns into a giant robot, with lethal looking hooked hands. It begs the question though...

A French language movie from Belgian director Henri Xhonneux and French surrealist artist Roland Topor. Based on the life and works of the Marquis de Sade. It's a mixture of live-action and stop-motion animation, with all the actors wearing life-like animal masks, to reflect their characters. Much of the animation involves the Marquis having long conversations with his huge metre long talking penis with a human face.

The penis is called Colin, and has a personality of his own, and a philosophy on life. He relates stories of debauchery to the Marquis, which form the basis for his stories. The stories and thus the movie make for a bizarre and sometimes unnerving sex comedy. That due to the nature of the masks, the sex scene veer uncomfortably close to being representations of bestiality. With their often highly sexualised human bodies, and animal heads. Making for an absurd piece of slightly disturbing cinema.

The Fantastically Surreal World Of Roland Topor - French surrealist writer and artist, more well known outside of France for his visual design of the cult animation Fantastic Planet (1973).

I recently wrote about Phantasmagoria the 1995, FMV point-and-click adventure game, that was considered one the most controversial games of its time, due the graphic violence it contained. However a year later, a game came out that possibly trumped it. And if it wasn't for a delay in publishing, it may well have been hailed as the most controversial adventure game of the mid-90s. 

Harvester was designed to shock, to be controversial, it described itself as "The most violent adventure game of all time." Originally scheduled for release in 1994, the game didn't hit the shelves until 1996. The game was an all out assault on the media hype that video gaming made players violent. It was a no-holds-barred bloody gore-fest, where you kill pretty much just kill whoever you wanted. The deaths were brutal and bloody.

Like an exploitation film, much of the game is laughably tongue-in-cheek. Th makers knew who they were offending and who they were entertaining. It's not a great game, it's confusing at times, conversations with NPCs is stilted and seemingly pointless. But hey, aren't they also the characteristics of a good exploitation flick? Take it for what it is, don't take it too seriously, and just keep repeating to yourself... It's just a game... It's just a game!

Before the eponymous 1984 movie, there was the 1975 Saturday morning kids TV show, The Ghost Busters. Only 15 episodes were filmed of this slapstick comedy show, featuring  Forrest Tucker and Larry Storch as Kong and Spencer, along with Tracy the gorilla. The characters they played were similar to those they had played in the popular late 1960s satirical sitcom F Troop. However in The Ghost Busters they played bumbling paranormal investigators, that paid homage to the Golden Age of monster movies. The formulaic show, had the gang invariably coming up against a parody of one of the classic Universal monsters. Filled with bad sets, over-the-top acting and the cringe-worthy laughter track, so much a feature of 70s TV comedy. Unrelated to the famous 1984 movie, Filmation revived the characters from the 1975 show in a 1986 animation series. 

In fact to make the 1984 movie, the makers had to obtain that rights to use the name "Ghostsbusters", and would call their subsequent 1986-1991 animation series The Real Ghostbusters. Sometimes referred to as Filmation's Ghostbusters, to avoid confusion, the series ran for 65 episodes. Reviving the characters of the live-action TV show, as their animated sons. Like The more famous Ghostbusters catchphrase of  "Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters!", each episode of Filmation's version used the catchphrase, "Let's Go, Ghost Busters!"

The Car That Ate Paris (1974): Known as The Cars That Ate People, in the Unites States, it's a horror comedy from Peter Weir. The people of a small out-back Australian town of Paris, make there living by causing car accidents for anyone passing through. Then looting the cars, getting rid of the dead, and sending the survivors to the local hospital to be experimented on. The young people of the town use the parts of the cars to make modified monster vehicles, designed for destruction. Tensions between the older townsfolk and the young rebels, boils over into a climatic scene of car carnage. 

The movie was Weir's first low-budget feature film, and wasn't successful on its initial release, but quickly gained a cult following. It's influences can be seen in later movies, such as the Roger Corman productions Death Race 2000 (1975), the original Mad Max and the second movie on our double-bill Dead End Drive-In (1986). Weir would go on the next year to direct the classic of Australian cinema Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), and eventually moving to Hollywood to make a number of highly acclaimed movies, including 1998's The Truman Show.

Dead End Drive-In (1986): Dystopian horror, set in a world where roaming gangs of disillusioned young people steal car parts, as cars are seen as a vital commodity in the future society in chaos. In an attempt to curb the crime-wave, authorities force young people into drive-in cinemas, where they are fed a steady diet of junk food, drugs, exploitation films and 80s "new wave" music. Many are happy with this, and come voluntarily. Some are forced into staying, against their will. Though there are obvious parallels with The Car That Ate Paris, a key difference with Dead End Drive-In is the how the youth are depicted. Here the majority are happy to be fed a consumerist junk diet. The anti-authoritarian rebellion of the 70s, turns into an conformist nihilism by the 80s.

Dead End Drive-In is a full-on piece of Ozpolitation cinema, featuring sex, drugs, violence, car chases and bad 80s music. But underlying its bad- b-movie credentials, is the social commentary on racism, violence and nihilistic attitudes of segments of Australian youth at that time. Something that was examined in the 1992 Australian drama starring Russell Crowe, Romper Stomper.