Saturday morning  kids animation series from the 80s. The story of a magical Rubik's Cube called... Wait for it... Rubik! The premise being that Rubik had fallen off the back of an evil magician's stagecoach, and was found by the three Rodriguez kids. Rubik could only be brought to life, if he was solved. Luckily the Rodriguez kids were among the few people able to solve the puzzle cube. Once solved, Rubik possessed magical powers and had the ability of flight. The show featured some tense moments, as the kids struggled to solve Rubik, in times of dire need. For some unknown reason Rubik had no arms, just a head and legs that appeared out of the cube. (I'm really not making this up, and I've not had any drugs!) 

The show aired on ABC in the United States for only one season of 18 episodes from 1983 to 1984. It was shown in a double bill with the Pac-Man animated series. With the kids being Hispanic, the the makers kept up the theme with the opening titles song performed by the 70s Puerto Rican boy band Menudo. The bands line-up changed throughout the years, and once featured the singer Ricky Martin for a period during the 80s. The Rubik theme is a pre-Ricky song however.

House (ハウス) is a 1977 Japanese cult horror comedy film. A group of girls travel into the countryside, to a house that is possessed with supernatural powers. The house attempts to devour the girls in increasingly bizarre and surreal ways. Beyond that it's hard to describe the magnificent madness that is House. There are moments that hark back to the era of silent movie slapstick comedies, the special effects are just weird, the acting is terrible, and the whole thing is utter nonsense. But those are all the things that make House such a great film. As it merrily skips along as a camp Japanese teen comedy, and suddenly switches to disturbing horror, and back again.

The film straddles the line between horror comedy and experimental arthouse film. With the screen filled with stunning visuals, it plays out like a bad LSD trip. With a floating disembodied head that has a bum biting fetish, a carnivorous piano, vicious killer bedding, and the blood gushing cartoon cat. The whole thing leaves you wondering what the hell you have just watched.

Critically panned (which often makes for great cult film), director Nobuhiko Obayashi went on to direct the live-action version of The Girl Who Leapt Through time in 1983, and the dark erotic cult film Sada (1998), based on the story of Sada Abe who  erotically asphyxiating her lover, Kichizo Ishida in 1936. Sada  then went on to cut off his penis and testicles and carrying them around with her in her handbag. Obayashi's film of the story is another must see of Japanese cult cinema.

Bit lovely bit of mid-70s exploitation-splatter fun with Blood Sucking Freaks, which was originally released in theatres under the title The Incredible Torture Show. An all out gore-fest, presented in a campy style, reminiscent of earlyHerschell Gordon Lewis's gore movies. A true expilotation classic, that unapologetically show-horns in lots of over-the-top violence, bad acting, boobs and ridiculous laughs.

In the movie Master Sardu (Seamus O'Brien) runs a Grand Guignol-style theatre with his assistant Ralphus. The shows that they present are verging on torture porn, but the audiences dismiss the shows as merely fake. However, the acts on stage are real, using women the pair have kidnapped and used as sex slaves. And thus the stage is set for a series of gory torture and murder set pieces, which include skull crushing, amputation, tooth pulling, decapitation, the list goes on. The most famous scene features one unfortunate victim having their skull drilled through the top with a household drill, and their brains sucked out with a straw. 

The movie was panned universally by critics, with some saying things such as "I think you're a cruel little nutcase if you talk someone else into seeing it", and "The nastiest, filthiest and just about WORST thing you will EVER SEE". The criticism of the movie being far more over-the-top than the movie itself. There are far worse movies than Blood Sucking Freaks. For me it's a perfect slice of 70s exploitation, and a true classic of the genre. A must see for any cult horror film fans.

A video game created in 1982 by Starpath Corp. (formerly known as Arcadia) for the Atari 2600 home video game console and featuring the Starpath Supercharger cassette accessory (originally called the Arcadia Supercharger). In which the special cartridge had a cassette port, to allow for a whole extra 6KB of memory, giving a "supercharged" kick to those blocky Atari games. (Supercharger sold separately.) 

In the oddly titled Space Invaders shoot-'em-up inspired game you have to fight off communist aliens, wanting to convert your planet into mutant communists. They are lead by an egg laying, irradiated vodka swilling Mother Creature (a parody of Mother Russia it can be assumed), who is hell-bent of spreading the evils of communism across the galaxy. The game allowed for multi-players. Up to four people could join-in, with players sharing the two Atari joysticks. 

Wow! Look at those pumped-up graphics that the whole extra 6KB brought to the Atari 2600! Assuming that the blocks are a purposeful design choice, relating in some way to the Eastern Bloc! Or it could be that the massive 6KB expansion had no impact on the quality of games. And the fact that they attempted to incorporate a cassette based element to a cartridge based system wasn't an utterly ridiculous and backwards move on the part of the game-makers.

Saturday-morning situation comedy, that ran only for one season of 13 episodes in 1976. The story of John Marton, a middle-school science teacher who comes across the famed Fountain of Youth, and takes a drink from it. The result is that he periodically turns from "big" John into "little" John. The show revolved around the various predicaments that John found himself in, as he changed back and forth between his 40 year old and 12 year old self.

The show ran on NBC in the United States and the BBC in the UK. It starred Herbert Edelman as "Big John" and Robert "Robbie" Rist as "Little John." Edelman a known character actor, who'd appeared in the Neil Simon comedies The Odd Couple (1968) and Barefoot In The Park (1967). And regularly appeared in popular TV shows during the 70s and 80s.

Robbie Rist, best known for playing Cousin Oliver in The Brady Bunch, and for voicing characters in TV Shows and movies like Stuffy the overly proud stuffed dragon in Doc McStuffins. He later went on the voice the character of Michelangelo in the film of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Big John, Little John may have only ran for one season, but for anyone growing up in the 70s and 80s, the theme song still sticks in your head.

From director Andrey Tarkovskiy, who brought us Solaris in 1972, comes this cult piece of philosophical Russian sci-fi. The Stalker is a guide, that leads two men, a writer and a professor through a strange wasteland known as the Zone, to find a room in the deepest heart of the Zone that will make your deepest desires come true. The film is loosely based on the novel Roadside Picnic by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky. Considered by many to be one of the best sci-fi films of all time, Stalker is an exercise in deep and considered metaphysics, forcing viewers to contemplate the philosophical layers that Tarkovskiy weaves into his seemingly simplistic narrative. The wasteland of the Zone is littered with symbolism, as viewers are forced to make sense of the often poetic use of imagery and sublime cinematography. Making Stalker a film that you must engage with, think about, and be left with innumerable questions after watching it. Creating a sci-fi piece in its rawest form. 

Stalker is long and drawn out, but never boring. Much of it shot in a brown tinted monochrome, the film consists of 142 shots in 163 minutes, with an average shot length of more than one minute and many shots lasting for more than four minutes. That is until the end, which is shot in rapid cuts, all the more compelling after the long slow build-up. 

Given away free with Kix cereal, the Atomic Bomb Ring contained actual degrading radioactive material. The instructions stated that "you'll see brilliant flashes of light in the inky darkness inside the atom chamber." Suggesting that to see the miracle of the atoms of polonium-alpha particles on a zinc sulphide screen, you took yourself off to a darkened room and put the atomic bomb ring to your eye. So that you could see the "frenzied flashes." inside the chamber.

Claiming that the Atomic Bomb Ring was PEEFECTLY SAFE, and that kids could wear the ring with "complete safety" may have been a bit of a naive statement from the manufacturers. Polonium-210, is a deadly element and its alpha particle emissions have a short have life of 138 days. However the silvery metal, found in uranium ore, and originally discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie in 1897 is deadly. It was used to assissinate the former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko in London, in 2006. A microgram of Po-210, which is no larger than a speck of dust, would certainly deliver a fatal dose of radiation. So for kids, who like to put things in their mouths, maybe this ring wasn't such a great idea.

Martin van Miële was a renowned French illustrator of bizarre erotic drawings, often with religious (or should be sacrilegious themes). He did a lot of illustrations for the noted British erotica publisher Charles Carrington, but found more widely acclaimed fame as the illustrator of H.G. Wells's First Men On The Moon in 1901 (Les Premiers Hommes dans la Lune), which was turned in to the early silent-era classic movie by Georges Méliès, Le Voyage Dans La Lune in 1902. Miële also illustrated for the French translation versions of the Sherlock Holmes series, but it's his strange satirical erotic illustrations that he has become most well known for.