Galaxy of Terror (1981)

Galaxy of Terror is a cheap, sleazy and goofy attempt by Roger Corman to cash in on the Sci-fi boom of the era.

The plot sees a spacecraft off to a distant planet to rescue the crew of another ship. But, the mission goes wrong when the rescue ship itself crashes. Then, the crew start to come under attack from what appear to be demons from their own minds.

Any right thinking trash hound will immediately be attracted by the cast. There is Robert "Freddy Krueger" Englund. The captain of the rescue ship is Grace Zabriskie aka Laura Palmer's mom in Twin Peaks. And one of the crew members is Erin Moran, otherwise known as Joanie Cunningham from Happy Days.

The film is often described as an Alien rip off. This hinges on one particularly unpleasant scene of a female crew member being raped by a slimy tentacle creature. The other deaths revolve around hallucinations linked to their subconscious.

Galaxy of Terror feels like it was shot in a weekend. But, there is a good grungy, Dark Star feel to the production design and special effects, partly due to a young James Cameron.

Unfortunately, a jumbled baffling narrative and too many slow dull patches make the film hard work and less fun than it should be.

Machine-Gun Kelly (1958)

Machine Gun Kelly is a change of pace from Roger Corman's more common 1950s output of cheap monster movies. It has an intelligent script, lean muscular direction from Roger Corman, and a brooding early performance from Charles Bronson.

Bronson plays George "Machine Gun" Kelly, a bank robber with two major obsessions - death, and a particular type of firearm. After a particularly successful job, Kelly is now Public Enemy Number One. Tensions grow in his gang, especially his partner in crime Flo Becker (Susan Cabot), who starts to question if he is a real man.

The screenplay uses Freudian elements to create a title character who is more than one dimensional. Kelly is infantilised by everyone around him. He has a fear of death that is repeatedly triggered by symbols that he sees. And he is a snivelling coward once deprived of his phallic machine gun. As well as making for interesting characterisation, this approach allows Corman to refute accusations that he is glorifying criminals.

Corman's directorial stylistic high point would come later, with his rich and surreal adaptions of several Edgar Allan Poe stories. Here, he shows the versatility and good taste to know that what he needs to do is to keep things focussed and moving. However, there are some great stylistic choices, such as the wordless opening sequence, showing a violent bank robbery that ends in the death of a security guard.

Wheels of Fire (1985)

Wheels of Fire is a competent action packed Mad Max knock-off, marred only by some dated 80s sexism.

The film is set in a post-apocalyptic (the reasons for this aren't clear, but don't matter) world. A permanently stubbled hero, Trace, spends his days riding around in his turbo boosted, flame throwing Ford Mustang, fighting marauding gangs.

There's a plot involving   a commune of people who want to fly to Mars in a homemade rocket, and an evil villain trying to wipe them out. Along the way Trace runs into a dwarf, a girl who has a hawk for a pet, a girl with telepathic powers, and a band of cave dwelling albino cannibals.

But, we're here for the car chases, gun battles and explosions, and Wheels of Fire does not disappoint. Nothing fancy or groundbreaking, but nothing unwatchably awful, just solid trashy entertainment. Plus, you have to admire any film with characters credited as Scum Woman 1 and Scum Woman 2.

Chopping Mall (1986)

A slasher film crossbred with Dawn of the Dead and Short Circuit, Chopping Mall is cheap cheesy gory fun.

The Park Plaza Mall has just unveiled a hi-tech security system, consisting of three shiny new robots programmed to disable and apprehend thieves using lasers and grappling hooks. Meanwhile, a gang of teens are having an after-hours party in one of the mall shops where they work. As the evening heats up, a lightning storm hits the mall and damages the computer controlling the robots and the highly armed mechanised menaces now want to bump off anyone who shouldn't be in their mall - which is just about anyone who is there.

Of course, a film like this is going to have a brainless plot (to repeat, the mall plans to stop shoplifters with lasers that can split a person's head open) and paper-thin characters. But director Jim Wynorski also manages to strike the right balance, so the result is something not po-faced and serious, or too irritatingly knowing, just first-class trash viewing.

Wynorksi also chucks in some in-jokes for Corman buffs, from posters for his previous films to cameos from the likes of Dick Miller, Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov.