Nun liebe kinder, gebt fein acht

The clocks have gone back, Halloween is past, there’s nothing left on the calendar but the nauseating goodwill and rampant sentimentality of Christmas. Time, then, for the Winter of Discontent, this blog’s third annual celebration of exploitation. Here’s a raised glass to filmic filth, movie malevolence, picture palace perversity, VHS venality and DVD damnation.

And before I ask forgiveness (yeah, right) for what I am about to do, here’s a more pertinent confession: Winter of Discontent 2011 wasn’t all it could have been. Illness and pressures of work meant the unfestivities got under way later than intended. Some titles I’d been promised through various sources were unforthcoming.

But not this year, oh my droogies. Preparations have been underway since summer. Some sleazy new titles have been added to the collection. The rental list has been prioritised such that I’m probably now on some MI6 watch list. And I can promise you some dark delights. There will be blood. There will be horror. There will be nudity, weaponry and profanity. The Agitation of the Mind is about to become a two month repository of the kind of movies your parents wouldn’t let you watch.

It all begins tomorrow, and the word on the street is … savage.