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A riff on the familiar American ‘80s crime movie where a helpless female must be protected from bad guys by a begrudging bodyguard (think Stallone’s Cobra ), this Hong Kong variation introduces a clever gender-swap and takes some seriously dark turns. Starring Yuen Biao and Patricia Ha as the mismatched couple dodging corrupt cops and underworld thugs, On the Run (1988) knows it’s treading on familiar territory. So director Alfred Cheung plots a route with just enough zigs and zags to make the trip interesting. After his DEA wife is murdered by a professional hit, Ming (Biao Yuen), a cop himself, vows to solve the case on his own time. But his activity stirs up a conspiracy within the department that puts his entire family at risk. His only hope is Pai (Patricia Ha), ironically enough the hired gun responsible for the death of his wife. Now both of them are on the hit list, forcing a truce while they try to get Ming’s daughter to safety. Delivering an unexpectedly emotional perfor...

There are certain filmmakers who seem to be actively trying to piss off their audience: Godard, David Lynch and certainly Robert Altman. They know the unspoken “rules” of cinema, a visual language we’ve all quietly agreed upon, but simply refuse to abide by them. Take O.C. and Stiggs (1987), Altman’s gleeful attempt to sabotage the National Lampoon franchise, a film that tested so poorly it was shelved for three years and scrubbed of any overt connection to the magazine. Is it a bad movie? Most definitely, by multiplex standards. But it’s also a deliberately hostile middle finger to studio executives who thought they could keep one of Hollywood’s most iconoclastic directors on a leash. O.C. and Stiggs are a pair of high school pranksters whose attention is mostly focused on their neighbors, the Schwabs, an eccentric family embodying the worst aspects of conspicuous consumption and American entitlement. What begins as juvenile harassment of the community at large escalates into bl...

Most of us have picked up enough Greek mythology from high school and Ray Harryhausen movies to guess our way through a pop quiz. The guy who chopped off Medusa’s head? Perseus. The hot babe in a clamshell? Aphrodite. The half-man half-fish holding a trident? Ummmm….Aquaman? We may not be perfect but trying to tackle Asian fantasy films is on a whole ‘nother level! Saga of the Phoenix , a Hong Kong-Japanese co-production based on a popular manga (and sequel to the previous Peacock King ), introduces so many characters and pseudo-religious mumbo jumbo in the first half hour it feels like a crash course in Eastern mysticism. But once that prerequisite is out of the way, the movie relaxes into a breezy fish-out-of-water comedy full of stop-motion creatures and hand-drawn special effects. Gloria Yip plays Ashura the Hell Virgin (sounds like a great Tinder name), promising to turn over a new leaf if she’s allowed seven days in the human world. Tagging along to keep her in line is ...

It doesn’t really matter if 1986’s Rosa is considered a comedy with elements of intense action or an action film with elements of broad comedy. Hong Kong audiences were eating up this particular brand of genre mashup during the industry’s golden era, blending established martial arts stars with crowd-pleasing comedians to offer up a little bit of everything on the cinematic menu. Produced by Sammo Hung’s Bo Ho Film Company, the savvy veteran gave his brother-in-arms Yuen Biao a rare leading role and a chance to reinvent himself in the modern HK martial arts mold. Accidental partners “Little Monster” (Biao) and Lui Kung (Lowell Lo) are assigned to track down a missing roll of film that will put a ruthless band of counterfeiters behind bars. Their strategy involves getting close to a petty gangster’s former girlfriend, the titular Rosa, in hopes that the criminal element takes the bait. But, in Lui’s case, preferably not before he gets Rosa between the sheets...while Little Monster’...

Structured like a teenage fairytale, Nobuhiko Obayashi’s The Island Closest to Heaven  (1984)is a dreamy coming-of-age postcard that intentionally echoes the sweeping cinematic cliches of a 1940’s Hollywood melodrama. That’s a lot to pack into one sentence…and one movie. But somehow the film’s episodic nature breezily jumps from one seaside encounter to the next without the exhaustion – or predictability – of a too familiar guided tour. Like the best vacations, it sneaks up on you with moments that feel small at the time but become special in hindsight. Mari (played with unaffected charm by teen icon Tomoyo Harada) travels outside her comfort zone on a trip to New Caledonia where she hopes to reconnect with the memory of her late father who described the island as “heaven on earth.” Instead, she’s greeted by the flat reality of a tourist trap. But the sincerity of her search inspires various strangers to suggest alternatives, leading to plane trips, boat rides and off-road exc...

As gleefully entertaining as Shaw Brothers films can be, those box-set collections can get a little, well, repetitive. Kick, punch, jump, repeat. It’s like button mashing on Super Street Fighter and hoping to be surprised with the results. But Arrow’s Shawscope Volume Four gathers films outside of the studio’s typical martial arts wheelhouse; odd detours into kid-friendly superhero territory, South Asian black magic, evil sorcerers and slimy vigilantes. And with sixteen – count ‘em, sixteen! – movies of steadily increasing weirdness, this limited edition is essential stuff for kung-fu and horror fans. Look, no one wants to read a play by play of each film. Besides, that would spoil the fun of what (for most people) would be “first contact” with movies that are so much more enjoyable going in blind. Things start off with the Ultraman -inspired Super Inframan , which sends a bunch of Ice Age Monsters topside in a series of Power Rangers -style face-offs. But the majority of the...

As one of the most important figures in Hong Kong cinema, a study of Sammo Hung’s career is a study of the HK film industry itself.  And that’s exactly the case with  Triple Threat: Three Films with Sammo Hung  which captures his talents as a performer and fight choreographer in various stages of development.  Never content to simply play “pudgy villain number 2,” Hung worked his way up from a Shaw Brothers role player to the golden boy of Golden Harvest, leaning into the fat jokes for laughs and turning himself into the most unlikely of superstars. The Manchu Boxer  (1974) walks a well-trodden path of ‘70s kung fu flicks:  a wandering fighter, a town in trouble and a band of thugs in need of a beat-down.  Shot using cut-rate sets in the freezing cold (you can see the actors’ breath in every scene), this is pretty much as far from the well-oiled machinery of a Shaw Brothers production as you can get.  But Hung’s presence, ...

What’s a giallo without copious amounts of blood, gratuitous nudity and acrobatic camerawork? 1976’s The House with Laughing Windows manages to avoid all that but still fit comfortably in a genre known more for its excessive exclamation marks than actual narrative coherence. Director Pupi Avati creates a giallo more by implication than definition, leaning into Gothic cliches and an almost puritanical approach to sexuality…until he doesn’t. Hired to restore a disturbing fresco in a quiet country village, Stefano receives disturbing anonymous phone calls warning him to back off. But curiosity leads him to uncover the artist’s history, revealing a sadomasochist-incestuous past with ties to the local citizenry who have pledged a vow of silence. The answers lie buried in the bricks and mortar of the decaying tourist town that would prefer its dead stay buried. Avati seems determined to prove he can make a “respectable” giallo. The pieces are all there: ominous artwork ( Deep Red ), my...

Criterion is the Mt. Everest of boutique labels. Its body of work – going as far back as the laserdisc days – includes some of the most important, most influential and most collectible films of all time. In an era when just being able to watch a classic film in its correct aspect ratio, they expanded to include commentary tracks, interviews, storyboards and alternate scenes before those special features were even a glint in the traditional studio marketer's eye. But, just like Everest, the boutique mountaintop has become a bit more crowded since then. And no one seems to be carrying the torch for introducing audiences to obscure, invigorating and adventurous cinema more than Radiance Films, the specialty label that released its first titles in 2023. Since then, their ratio of hits to misses has been nothing short of jaw-dropping, including their latest: three films from French actor-director Robert Hossein collected under the title Wicked Games . Hossein, probably best known i...

Thanks to WW2 and a lengthy civil war, Greek cinema was always lagging behind other European countries. But as waves of Italian neorealism, film noir and screwball comedies passed through, filmmakers picked up the baton and began incorporating popular genres into their own productions. Beginning in the ‘50s, this golden age spawned hits from the major studio, Finos Film, but also gave birth of independents whose influence wasn’t felt until decades later. That, in a nutshell, exemplifies The Ogre of Athens (1956) a socio-political, film-noir, musical comedy that truly fits the description all of the above. Thomas, a meek and lonely bank clerk, is mistaken for a notorious criminal after a photo in the newspaper matches his description. On the run from police, he stumbles into sketchy club full of showgirls and gangsters, the latter of whom also mistake him for the Ogre and force him to participate in their latest heist. Fearful but flattered, Thomas begins to embrace his role as a...

She’s a political prisoner.  He’s a nazi officer.  But even the Third Reich is powerless against true love!  The synopsis might be factually accurate; but the short-lived  Naziploitation  sub-genre wasn’t really designed for critical analysis.  It was just another excuse to parade rape, torture and phony surgeries in front of audience’s that were getting increasing hard to shock.  Truth be told,  SS Experiment Love Camp  (1976) is far from the worst of the bunch, shot with some restraint (in the Trump era, anyway) in terms of debauchery…and in regards to evil Nazi scientists. Brought in with the latest group of hot enemies of the state, Mirelle falls head over heels for Helmut, a soldier brought in to help propagate the Aryan race.  While casual hook ups are encouraged, their relationship is strictly forbidden by Col. Von Kleiben, who’s hoping to use the advanced medical techniques to solve his own, uh, erec...

A pop-music confection of psychic powers, first love, and invaders from Venus, 1981’s School in the Crosshairs is a mainline rush of anime aesthetics and pre-MTV aspirations. And if you think that’s a mouthful, wait’ll you get a look at the film itself! Director Nobuhiko Obayashi ( House ) stacks plot devices like Jenga pieces, relying on the charisma of super-producer Haruki Kadokawa’s handpicked pop princess to keep it from collapsing under its own weight. That secret ingredient is star Hiroko Yakushimaru, the cherub-faced schoolgirl who’d break out later that same year in Sailor Suit and Machine Gun . Here she plays Yuka, the most popular girl in school, who discovers her telekinetic abilities have drawn the attention of a power-hungry alien bent on enslaving her fellow students. With help from a mysterious new girl on campus, the villains drain all the fun from Daii Academy, transforming it into a fascist state devoted entirely to academics.   Based on an oft-adapted novel by ...

John Carpenter had already tackled a Stephen King adaptation (the under-appreciated Christine ), so he was on familiar ground with In the Mouth of Madness (1995), an H.P. Lovecraft inspired tale about a best-selling horror writer whose work seems to be bending the reality of his avid readers. Sam Neill stars as John Trent, a cynical insurance investigator sent into the wilds of New England to track down the reclusive author and recover his final novel. However, what he finds is the fictional town of Hobb's End (think Castle Rock or Dunwich) has popped up in some inter-dimensional crevasse, a gateway between our world and that of the "Old Ones," a menagerie of monsters who grow stronger with each new reader. And the movie comes out next month! Written by New Line executive - and horror fan - Michael De Luca, In the Mouth of Madness is a dark but playful journey through Lovecraft Country, blending slimy practical effects and more outré imaginative flourishes well-suite...

It’s hard to justify the artistic value behind every exploitation flick that unspooled on 42 nd  street in the ‘70s and ‘80s.  Especially when you’re dealing with the “rape- revenge” genre.  Movies like  I Spit on Your Grave  (1978) were vilified, despite their eventual female empowerment, for depicting sexual assault for the sake of titillation, although this was rarely ever the case.  Regardless, it’s not a subject matter to which most “normal” people are anxious to subject themselves.   Abel Ferrara’s  Ms. 45  covers the same dangerous ground, forcing its central character and the audience to endure two rapes within the first 10 minutes.  But the movie that follows is quite unlike any other grindhouse thriller in history: a morally ambiguous, socially deviant, psychologically damaging masterpiece of street-level independent filmmaking.   Shot during the “disco sucks” era in New York City, Ferrara’s camera...

Although  Outland  (1981) isn’t officially part of the  Alien  or  Blade Runner  universe, but it’s certainly cut from the same cloth.  Director Peter Hyams blue-collar space odyssey shares the same “truckers in space” visual aesthetic, trapping its characters in a corporate-funded indentured servitude that doesn’t look much more appealing than a Pennsylvania coal mine…and is actually  whole   lot  more dangerous. Set on a mining facility on one of Jupiter’s moons, Sean Connery stars as Marshall William O’Niel, assigned to keep the peace on an installation that seems to be having more accidents than usual.  What clues he can turn up point to a conspiracy headed by Sheppard (Peter Boyle), whose work-hard, play-hard philosophy is turning his employees into drug addicted time bombs. Outnumbered and outgunned, O’Niel is targeted for death by a hit squad arriving on the next shuttle with a countdown straight out of  High N...

The two anthologies that make up  Three  and  Three… Extremes  twist the horror genre into something that  feels more existential than supernatural…although there are plenty of lost souls floating around too.  Each short (three in each, hence the title) finds its director taking on a cinematic dare: how beautiful and grotesque can things be at the same time? Jumping from Japan to Korea to Thailand to Hong Kong, Asian horror goes places Hollywood fears to tread and these six films are a fascinating tour into unfamiliar territory.     Three  (2002) starts off quietly with Kim Jee-woon’s  Memories , turning marital amnesia into something like a fuzzy purgatory of guilt, regret and sorrow…with a little murder thrown in for good measure. Nonzee Nimibutr’s  The Wheel  fits comfortably in folk horror territory, mixing cursed puppets, jealousy and greed for the most rural outsider of the bunch. But things get urban again...

The beautiful practicality of horror films is that they require very few resources:  a cabin in the woods, some fake fog, clever camera angles and a used mask from the sporting goods store and you’re ready to roll.  This isn’t meant as an insult, it’s part of what makes the genre so accessible.  But it’s also what makes  The Last Horror Film  (1982) such an outlier in the crowded slasher-giallo category.  Shot on location during the 1981 Cannes Film Festival, director David Winters uses the glitz and glamour of the actual event as the backdrop for his  Taxi Driver -inspired tale of audience obsession and industry backstabbing. Reuniting stars Joe Spinell and Caroline Munro from 1980’s  Maniac , the film follows Vinny, a deranged New York cabbie and wannabe filmmaker who travels to Cannes to track down his favorite scream queen, Jana Bates. Armed with a camera, delusions of grandeur, and an unhealthy attachment to his mothe...

Slasher films were a dime a dozen in the mid-‘80s. Wannabe franchise villains were popping out of video games, movie screens and 976 numbers to steal some of Jason and Freddy’s box office mojo. But 1985’s The Island , a Hong Kong production, hearkens back to the ‘70s era of horror family fare…meaning inbred maniacs looking for a new addition to the group photo. Using the films of Tobe Hooper and Wes Craven as a template, director Po-Chih Leong delivers an anything-goes thriller that’s party comedy, part torture-porn and all Hong Kong. An inexperienced teacher brings his troublesome students along on a two-day excursion where they’re greeted by the island’s only residents: a trio of troubled brothers with designs on the available females. After a matchmaking attempt is rejected, pitchforks, machetes and various pointy objects come into play as the brothers decide to recruit a new bride by any means necessary. Odd in a way only Hong Kong movies can be, The Island jumps from Last Hous...

The iconography of classic horror films from the West is comforting in its familiarity: tilted headstones in a foggy graveyard, musty castle corridors and laboratories full of inexplicable equipment. But this library of imagery wasn’t completely universal (pun intended). In fact, Japanese horror, despite leaning on American and British tropes, built their monster universe on homegrown legends inhabiting a landscape of bamboo forests and spooky swamps, phantasms that stalked their victims in silhouette behind a translucent paper screens. Daiei Gothic: Volume Two collects three more films that explore the bizarre and pleasantly unfamiliar world of Japanese horror. Demon of Mount Oe  (1960) is the most formalized film in the trio. A loose retelling of the Shuten-dōji legend, it fuses period samurai adventure with a parade of grotesque monsters that feel equal parts mythic, psychedelic and kaiju-inspired…not to mention all the disembodied heads! It’s as if Kurosawa had been handed ...

Like your favorite snack, it’s hard to watch just one Shaw Brothers movie. They seem to go down best in bunches, particularly when someone else does the curating for you. And that’s exactly what you get in Eureka’s latest set,   Furious Swords and Fantastic Warriors: The Heroic Cinema of Chang Cheh   — five discs, ten movies, and a blistering amount of kung fu, wuxia, and, for something a little different, staged musical action. Disc one focuses on the Shaolin cycle with   The Men from the Monastery   and   Shaolin Martial Arts . The first film is a convoluted collection of chapters that never quite gel, introducing historical characters who figure prominently in the Shaw Brothers fantasy universe. This mix of facts, famous warriors, and timelines plays out better in the next film, which adds a touch of romance to the typical plot of two acolytes mastering special skills to defend their temple. Disc two pairs   King Eagle   and   Iron Bodyguard ....

Before the Italians turned cannibalism into grisly cinematic joke there was Raw Meat (1972), Gary Sherman's underground people-eater movie that mixes elements of expected Grand Guignol with an oh-so-British sense of pathos and restraint. And its relative obscurity over the years has only enhanced its reputation as a less visceral take on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre when actually the two films share very little in common. Sherman's film is more polished, more structured, more procedural in approach. But it never quite achieves the demented level of insanity of Tobe Hooper's work. Other than a penchant for human flesh, each director has a different end game in mind. Making their way home on a late London subway, Alex and Patricia come upon a dying man slumped over the steps. Alex, a callous American abroad, suggests they ignore the incident but Patricia insists they return with help. Once they arrive with a constable, the man, who turns out to be a high-ranking governm...

Authoritarian regimes have a way of shaping art accidentally, not by what they allow, but what they forbid. Filmmakers worm their celluloid fingers into narrow cracks in the wall of what’s permitted to get their message out. So when a film finally does slips through it seems almost miraculous in its honesty, capturing a social reality the regime would camouflage behind less artful propaganda. Spain in the late 1950s was still under Franco’s thumb, yet Carlos Saura’s Los Golfos (1959) landed like a brick through a window when it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, laying bare the restless frustrations of working-class youth in Madrid. The story follows a group of teenage boys, petty criminals looking for an easy score, whose friendship is glued together less by loyalty than by circumstances for survival. But that changes when they work together to steal enough money for Juan – a toreador in training – to stage a showcase of his bullfighting skills in the arena. The gang circles arou...

There are guitar solos and then there are guitar solos . You know, the sort of finger-bleeding epics that fill up half a vinyl record while the rest of the band just tries to keep pace. Free Bird, Stairway to Heaven, November Rain , they all revolve around one tremendous explosion of individual talent that goes on far longer than it should…yet somehow never seems long enough. Oddly enough, 1966’s The Betrayal , a fairly standard chambara film directed by Tokuzo Tanaka, ends with a similar display of virtuoso talent, only this time the song is played with a sword. Kobuse (Raizo Ichikawa) is a loyal samurai who agrees to take the blame for a murder rap in order to spare his clan’s reputation and – although he’s unaware of the fact – protect the son of a high official. But what began as a backdoor deal turns into a death sentence. Kobuse is hunted by both clans as he bounces from town to town, plagued by guilt over the fiancé he abandoned and ashamed of the emptiness of a samurai’s oath ...

When is ghostly vengeance justified?  I’d say pissing on someone's gravestone not once but  twice  is grounds for some supernatural payback.  And that’s exactly what happens in  Fear Cabin: The Last Weekend of Summer  (2024), a decidedly anti-A24 throwback to the ‘80s traditions of big boobs, demonic possession and low-budget ingenuity. When Cassie and company arrive at their Airbnb, they’re greeted by your standard creepy old man (played by former  Party of Five  poster boy Jeremy London), strange noises in the woods and a tattered diary full of pentagrams and incantations.  But instead of leaving a bad review, they decide to toss the old book on the fire, roast some marshmallows and get their money’s worth.  Which they  do , in blood… mwahahahaha! Written, directed, produced and co-starring Brian Krainson, an Atlanta-based stunt coordinator with credits on  Ozark  and the vampire spoof  Renfield ...

By and large “predictability” is American horror’s bread and butter.     There are always a few outliers that start a new trend and a few auteurs who don’t play by the rules, but mainstream titles stick to jump scares 95% of the time.     That’s what makes Hong Kong horror such a breath of fresh air.     Built off magic, folklore and batshit crazy practical effects, movies like 1992’s   The Cat   are nearly impossible to second guess…and almost equally impossible not to enjoy. The plot, as best as it can be wrangled into a straight line, involves an alien princess hiding out on Earth with her bodyguards, one of whom takes the shape of a housecat.  Avoiding pursuit by an amoeba-like enemy that takes over the bodies of its victims,  the princess finds an ally in Wisely, an eccentric writer who specializes in just this sort of intergalactic weirdness. There are psychic battles, slime-drenched transformations, and a final act that’...