“Erotic (or Sexy) Nights of the Living Dead” (1980) is a zombie porno flick that dithers between being a zombie exploitation flick with some decent nekkidity and being a flat-out hardcore porno flick with some decent zombitation.

I think the jury’s out.

It’s a slightly alarming flick, because the guy who gets the most action, John Wilson, played by Mark Shannon, looks like Keith Hernandez, the Mets first basemen in 1986.

There’s a scene with two gals and Keith, er, mark, or John, or whatever, that is pornographic in every sense of the term.

And there are a couple more that get close.

Laura Gemser, star of innumerable Emanuelle with one”m” flicks, is the star of this, and gets nekkid, but not pornographically.

Just sleazily.

The plot is about Stupid White People who want to put a hotel on Cat Island, ignoring the fact that the place is crawling with zombies, plus Laura Gemser and her blind grandfather.

Heads, necks, and a penis roll. The de-penising of Keith Hern— er, John Wilson is quite revolting.

Also: Fun in the insane asylum. Aquatic zombies.  Dramatic foreshadowing, leading to a solid if predictable denouement. A lovely mise-en-scene, which is French for long, lingering, and quite explicit shots of nekkid women doing things. With a champagne bottle, in one case. Hunky nekkid men, if you are watching in mixed company.

I give it two coils for not being one or the other.

Did you know that Groucho Marx wanted to call his quiz show “You Bet Your Ass”?

Well, he did. They settled on “You Bet Your Life,” which sounds pretty ominous.

Speaking of ominous, Noburo Iguchi’s Zombie Ass: Toilet of the Dead is not, strictly speaking, about toilets — even ominous ones. There is an outhouse in the film, and it has dead people in it, but it’s really incidental to the plot, which almost never gets in the way of the story.

Arisa Nakamura plays Megumi, a nice Japanese schoolgirl who knows some kung fu and is heartbroken over the suicide of her sister. She’s with two girls and a dorky guy, plus a skeezy weirdo, and they are going camping, in the best, time-honored, “Stupid People in the Woods” manner.

One of the gals wants to eat a parasitic worm so she can be skinny and become a model. They find a worm in a trout which Megumi catches with a net.

Now here’s where we have some problems. First of all, are there trout in Japan? Second — do they have big worms in them? Third, is it bcause they are wormy that they hang in space, waiting for a kung fu net-twirling Japanese kid to show up and catch them? Fourth — ever hear of cat and release?

I realized at this point in the film that the ol’ suspension of disbelief was going to come in handy.

Anyhoo, as you might guess, there are zombies around, and in trying to get away from them the gang find a little village.

Ko (played by Yuki, or maybe it’s the other way around), is feeling a little under the weather on account of the worm she ate, and she starts farting.

 She poots her way to the outhouse, where, as is often the case in these isolated locations with a mad scientist in  the barn and tapeworms in the trout, there are also zombies in — or under — the outhouse.

Iguchi keeps upping the ante, to the point where the film is utterly disgusting in every possible way.

But never tasteless.

We’re talking the usual exploding heads and popping eyes. Visible farts. Visible farts with demons in them. Zombies walking on all fours, backwards, with demon parasites sticking out of their butts. White panties. Flying parasite queen, in blue sun dress and flowered panties. Two breasts. Eight gallons blood; four gallons assorted glop. One mad scientist, one toothless goober, one skeezy drug addict, one flying trout.

An outstanding piece of work, and short, too.  Iguchi is an instant Immortal. Four coils, no doubt about it.

Rene Cardonas III’s Vacation of Terror (1989) is the film that answers the question “Should We Go to the Country House We Just Inherited, the One Where the Witch Was Burned in Black and White?”

Uncle Fernando, who eats weird food, inherits a country house from his aunt, and packs the whole gang — twin boys, daughter Gaby, pregnant wife, and niece Paulina — into the car to go check it out. It’s pretty much a ruin, but the kids like it.

But darn the luck — Gaby falls into the well where the evil witch’s doll was stashed 100 years earlier.

See, the flick begins with a black and white flashback of some infuriated yokels burning a witch. And instead of burning all her stuff while they’re at it, they stick it all in a well, which as you might guess is just asking for trouble.

You’ll find this lax attitude toward destroying evil in these decadent, post-modern times. They got Anthony Weiner, all right, but did they go after his creator, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.)? Nooo.

So the doll starts rolling her eyes and things start going awry – snakes in the fridge, miscarriages, you name it.

Meanwhile Julio, Paulina’s boyfriend, comes down in his old pickup. He has cleverly tied to the mirror another relic of the witch burning, a hunk of crystal that glows in the presence of evil, and of course they don’t get wise to the usefulness of the gizmo until it’s almost too late.

Directed by Rene Cardona III, the grandson of the immortal Rene Cardona (Doctor of Doom, The Wrestling Women vs. The Aztec Mummy), and lacking in the latter’s sense of the absurd. I wonder if the opening flashback is an outtake from one of Grandpa’s flicks.

We’re talking flying crockery as part of a larger pattern of poltergeistitation. Acid-washed jeans on Julio, which makes this a true horror film. Big 80s hair on Paulina. Strongly implied miscarriage. Ham on a plate. Exceptional screaming. Bad driving. No nekkidity (automatic one coil deduction), and a 3.7 (of a possible 5) on the fast-forward button.

Not enough terror, in other words, and no compensating gratuitous nudity. In Spanish with subtitles. One coil.

Some years back, in one of those trances that Amazon.com induces, I bought the box set of Kolchak: The Night Stalker DVDs.

It wasn’t expensive, and has proved to be a good investment. They sit on the shelf next to other worthy efforts, such as the Aztec Mummy and Coffin Joe flicks, “The Wire,” and all the “Avengers” episodes with Diana Rigg.

I watch these things about every other year.

Kolchak wears the same seersucker sack suit and battered hat throughout — usually with white tennis shoes.

If he takes notes it’s on pieces of scrap paper. His reporter’s kit includes a portable cassette recorder and an Instamatic, which never fails to produce blurry, useless photos of the Monster du Jour.

I can sympathize with his editor, Tony Vincenzo. He sends Kolchak to interview a transcendental meditation guru, and instead gets an urban vampire story. Both useful contributions, but hardly interchangeable.

Like “The X-Files,” much of the series is shot in the dark — probably because the budget for convincing monster makeup was tight.

It’s all very silly, and very much a product of its time (1974-5). There are go-go dancers and hippies. Wide lapels. Kolchak calls fellow reporter Ron Updyke “Uptight.”

Gratuitous manual typewriters. Hot plates for the coffee. Convertible yellow Mustang, with manual transmission. Knit ties. Buttondown collars. Ghouls. Every character actor known to man, ca. 1974.

Fabulous stuff. A series-wide four coils, and an Iron Coil nomination.

Hattie Farber demonstrating Silas Froont’s prototype Choda-Wick at the Chicago Trade Exposition, 1887. 

The best way to describe Ferlin Husky singing the theme to “Swamp Girl” is to let you hear it for yourself.

Magnificent, isn’t it?

And you get a whole movie too!

Nat, who is black, lives in the swamp with Janine, the Swamp Girl, who is young, blonde, pretty —and pretty nimble in a boat.

Swamp Girl thinks Nat is her Paw, until circumstances force him to tell her the truth, which is that he saved her from the drunken white-slaving abortionist Doc.

So now he’s just Nat.

Meanwhile the local goobers are searching for the Swamp Girl, plus the sheriff, plus the Swamp Ranger, who is Ferlin Husky.

And a Bonnie and Clyde couple decide to cross the swamp on foot, which is not a good idea.

Alligator death. Snake death — twice. No, three times. (Snakes are cheaper than gators.) Air boat. Magic dress on Swamp Girl, that never gets wet or dirty. No nekkidity (automatic one-coil deduction). Brutal speech by mother of Convict Girl, to wrap up loose ends of plot. Convincing demonstration of why loafers are not the right footgear for swamps.

And, of course, the dulcet tones of Ferlin Husky singing the theme song and playing the guitar.

Two and a half coils.

“My Name is Bruce” is an extremely silly comedy horror flick from 2007 starring Bruce Campbell as himself. He is picked by a fan to help combat an Ancient Evil. Very mild hilarity ensues. No nekkidity. Self-referential, in the same sense that taking a picture of yourself making a stupid face and sending it to all your moron “friends” is self-referential.

It’s a harmless and forgettable way to kill 86 minutes.

Mildly amusing, it gets two coils.

I have now rewatched “Deathstalker,” “Deathstalker II,” and the imaginatively titled “Deathstalker III.”

And while number one has a certain flair in the evil wizard with the face tats; and number two has the unforgettable Monique Gabrielle in two roles that both require extensive breastal exposure, plus John La Zar (as the sorcerer) using up all his little riffs that got cut from “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls”…

Number three is superior.

Why?

Because of Thom Christopher as the evil wizard Troxartes.

You probably know Thom from “Law and Order” reruns. He usually plays a New York jerk of some kind – boardroom jerk, attorney jerk, ordinary bald schmendrick-type jerk.

Thom’s got damn good teeth, and they really get a workout in “Deathstalker III.” Rarely has so much scenery been chewed by one actor.

He gives us demonic “I shall rule the world while clad in a fleece blanket from Target” laughter. He sashays through what the discerning critics of Mystery Science Theater rightly called the worst swordfight in cinema history. (The longest, too, according to Joe Bob Briggs’ post-screening assessment for The Movie Channel.)

But most of all, Thom’s Troxartes channels Gloria Swanson.

Now is that eerie or what?

The costume department was on the ball in this flick. The head henchman does his thing wearing a helmet clearly inspired by the cover of Cher’s 1978 album “Take Me Home.”

So while John Allen Nelson does not bring the same insouciant charm to the title role as D2’s John Terlesky, and Carla Herd does not get nearly as nekkid as Monique, in Thom Christopher’s Troxartes we have the stuff of greatness.

Three and a half coils, if I can find them.

“Siren” aka “Erotic Siren” is a shot on video, released on video erotic horror film that is neither erotic nor particularly horrifying.

A gang of five guys, dressed unconvincingly as women, knocks off a bank and gets away with a big sack of cash. They drive up to an abandoned house to wait for a confederate to take them to a boat. Then they’re going to sail somewhere.

But dang. There’s a semi-fresh girl messing around by the side of the road, so for no apparent reason they stop, she sees the money and guns, and so now they have to bring her along.

Oh yeah, she came out of the ocean, nekkid, in the first scene of the flick.

Tedious “Treasure of the Sierra Madre” thieves falling out stuff ensues, except in this case they are all looking to cut themselves a slice of the siren girl.

Bottom line, she kills them all, but they die happy.

The same two breasts, repeatedly. Psycho gangster shit, in Japanese. Incredibly bad suits (looks like they knocked over a Men’s Wearhouse, not a bank). Artsy sex shots, decidedly non-erotic.

Starring Japanese porno star Aoi Sola, if that does anything for you.

Phooey. One coil.

Takao Nakano’s 2010 “Big Tit Zombie” is an unusually stupid and tasteless film and as such zooms to the top of the CACA charts.

It stars Japanese porn queen Sora Aoi, aka Aoi Sora, aka Aoi Sola, and aka a few other names that are all remarkably similar.

She doesn’t have especially big tits, either, but le tout ensemble is quite attractive. Especially when wielding a chain saw.

The plot, such as it is, has five strippers working in an unsuccessful club that just happens to be connected by underground passage to a dank dungeon with Cabbage Patch dolls and a well. Oh, and there is a Book of the Dead.

Naturally one of the strippers reads from the Book of the Dead. It is de rigueur in these situations. Otherwise the movie would just be called “Big Tit,” or possibly “Big Tits,” and where would you be?

Zombies emerge from the well, and hilarity ensues.

What sets this one apart from, say, “Zombie Ass: Toilet of the Dead” are the sushi scenes (once with sushi, once with entrails).

And where “Zombie Ass” had unusual things erupting from the butt-type area, “Big Tit Zombie” has a fiery…

Uhh.

I can’t say it. The area from which the fire explodes is, uh…

Adjacent! That’s it. The fire comes from a region of a lady actor’s personal body that is adjacent to the butt-type area of the personal b.

The film is also very meta, which can mean anything. In this case it means that the subtitles rarely match the dubbed dialogue, which creates an ever-changing dialectic and existential tension that calls into question the very nature of cinema itself.

(Ha! Top that, dog-ass New York Times!)

It also means the director is shouting things at the actors, and you can see the wires on the tentacle things.

Four breasts (each set twice). Chain saw splitting of zombie, twice. Book of the Dead. Gibberish Latin that’s not even Latin. (It’s not even close.) Mt. Fuji as subject of subtextual jokes. Amusing zombies. And that fire thing.

Four coils, unreservedly, and a nomination for the next Iron Coil award.