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It seems like there's a new cultural touchstone discovered in the martial arts genre every 6 months or so, such is the impact of home video on a cult of fandom that once traded VHS tapes by mail to hunt down the complete Shaw Brothers library or that rare early appearance by Jackie Chan. So with the induction of Dragon Inn (1967) as part of the Criterion Collection, one might be tempted to dismiss the film as a lesser effort from director King Hu whose poetic A Touch of Zen already made its special edition debut. But as his first project outside of China (Hu started his own company in Taiwan after breaking off from the Shaw Brothers), Dragon Inn is yet another essential title in the ever growing library of wuxia films whose impact lingers far beyond the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon phenomenon. Situated on the edge of open desert, the Dragon Inn is invaded by a small army of assassins hired to ambush the family of a condemned government official. But as they wait, the Inn ...

The film that almost won director Vincent Ward the Alien 3 assignment (although his influence on the screenplay is still strongly felt), 1988's The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey has aged surprisingly poorly. A time travel adventure set during the Black Death, a small village's only hope for survival relies on the visions of a young boy who leads a team deep underground to find the far side of the world. Instead, they pop up in contemporary Auckland, New Zealand, where their desperate mission to place a sacred cross atop the tallest church spire is fraught with all the perils of modern life like highway traffic and elevated trains. Alternately cute, quirky and pretentious, Ward's more overt art film tendencies are relegated to the lead character's visions of the future (which look like leftover footage from Bergman's Wild Strawberries mixed with The Hobbit ) while the rest of the film leans towards an audience friendly fish-out-of-water tale. The director ...

Film critics used to talk a lot about chemistry, that inexplicable pairing of two stars who just seem to "get" each other. With genuine movie stars, particularly of the female variety, all but extinct these days, it's pretty much a moot point; films are packaged around a concept rather than characters. But it wasn't an exact science even then. Take 1942's My Gal Sal , a pretty typical 20th Century Fox musical starring the completely atypical Rita Hayworth. In this based-on-a-true story adaptation of the life of songwriter Paul Dresser, an Indiana born preacher's son who works his way from traveling medicine shows to the toast of New York's high society, she's paired up with Victor Mature, whose rugged features and frankfurter fingers are a poor match for a dashing tunesmith. But such is the charm and allure of Hayworth that it doesn't really matter who she's paired with; she commands her co-star's - and the audience's - a...

Japan pumped out Yakuza films by the hundreds from the late '50s through the '70s, endlessly kick starting careers and franchises to fight off the lure of television until the studio system finally crumbled. Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell Bastards ! (1963), starring Jo Shishido as a tough-talking private eye who inserts himself into a gang rivalry, offers up something a bit different. More of an American film noir with musical intermissions, Seijun Suzuki's film is a kitchen sink of private dick clichés, including a misunderstood femme fatale, comic relief sidekicks and some great one liners that would've made Bogart jealous ("I didn't deserve that slap, so I gave it back to you.") After a series of hijackings that pit one gang against the other, Tajima (Shishido) goes undercover to find out who's pulling off these risky Yakuza raids. His investigation requires a phony name and elaborate back-story, dodging old girlfriends, even performing...

It's understandable if spaghetti western fans are a little gun-shy about adding new titles to their collection. After all, the genre cannibalized itself to the point where it was hard to tell a Dollars knock-off from a knock-off of a knock-off. Arrow Video's 5-disc Complete Sartana box set is about at legit as things get in the Italian film industry, gathering the original If You Meet Sartana...Pray for Your Death and four other films in the series, the majority starring Gianni Garko (George Hilton takes over for the final entry) as the dapper, quick-draw, card-sharp whose nose for gold seems to put him in the middle of a dangerous situation wherever he goes. While the series starts off as a Leone clone, things get more interesting with each sequel, particularly Light the Fuse...Sartana is Coming , with a script by giallo innovator Ernesto Gastaldi that blends the two genres brilliantly, layering a series of double-crosses so deep the plot becomes intentionally comical. ...

Furthering their trip down the New Zealand filmmaking rabbit hole, Arrow Films have released Vigil (1984) the debut narrative film from director Vincent Ward whose follow-up, The Navigator (1988), would point him toward a Hollywood career that never fully materialized. But here we see the visionary look that attracted so much attention in its nascent form, set against the almost otherworldly New Zealand landscape. Dealing with sex, death and magic, all intermingled in the mind of a 10-year-old girl on the edge of puberty, Vigil is both a family drama and a dark fantasy. After the death of her father, Toss (Fiona Kay) and her mother struggle to run the family farm with the help of her eccentric grandfather. But the arrival of mysterious handyman, who also was also present at her father's death, sends Toss' already vivid imagination into overdrive. Both attracted and repelled by the stranger, her reality becomes skewed by the domestic disturbance, clinging to promises of...

While an understanding of visual storytelling seems to be imparted in the womb these days (is Nielsen tracking fetus viewing trends, I wonder?), believe it or not, the language of cinema had to be invented. Close-ups, wide-shots, cross-cutting; the mechanics of the modern blockbuster all have their origin in The Birth of a Nation (1915), director D.W. Griffith's sprawling three-hour silent epic set amongst the political and social turmoil of the Civil War. The Stonemans and the Camerons, once a cordial pair of families, find themselves on opposite sides of the conflict, destroying romantic relationships and turning lifelong friends into unwilling enemies. The crux of the argument revolves around slavery, leading to the heroic rise of the Ku Klux Klan, who gather their forces to defeat the unleashed Negro menace. Yes, that's Griffith's take on history, based on a novel The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan . There's no defense for the film's p...

Supporting actors are more than just an anything-goes Academy Awards kickoff category; in the right circumstances - and despite minimal screen time -they can push everyone else right into the background. Take 1956's Hilda Crane , starring Jean Simmons as the titular modern woman, returning to her small-town roots and finding it difficult to adjust to common old-fashioned notions like marriage, kids and social compromises. The film, part of a wave of movies that questioned just what it meant to be a woman in post-war America, is predictably melodramatic and stagey (having been adapted from the play by Samson Rephaelson). It's 20th Century Fox quality through and through, but it's also a dreadful bore. That is until the entrance of Evelyn Barnes as Mrs. Burns, the overprotective prospective mother-in-law who takes an instant dislike to Hilda's scandalous past and is intent on breaking up the romance with her wealthy son, Russell (Guy Madison). Barnes takes a characte...

Even within the horror-exploitation fan community, Last House on the Left (1972) is a legendarily divisive film. It's not the most explicit in the rape-revenge genre ( I Spit on Your Grave takes things a bit further) and certainly not the most polished ( Night Train Murders tells the same story with much more style), but it staked its claim early as the premiere example of the heights (or depths) of which '70s horror was capable of achieving. Director Wes Craven and producer Sean S. Cunningham, with a pair of adult features behind them, knew the genre's success would soon be measured on a sliding scale of smut and pushed the limits relentlessly. On their way home from a concert, Mari and Phyllis are kidnapped by a quartet of escaped criminals who drag them to a supposedly isolated forest where they humiliate, rape and murder them. As fate would have it, the scene of the crime is only a short walk from Mari's home where her parents, having discovered the bodies...

Science (and the porn industry) has proven conclusively that visual stimulation is a powerful part of male arousal. And for those with an obsessive nature, sex can be as addictive as any drug. Writer / director Paul Schrader specializes in characters with just those sort of psychological fixations, making him a good match for Auto Focus (2002), the dramatized biography of Bob Crane, star of TV's Hogan's Heroes whose murder seven years after the show wrapped remains unsolved to this day. Schrader's film, however, is more interested in the career-killing spiral of compulsive sexual activity that put Crane on this tragic path in the first place. A successful radio DJ reticent to star in a comedy about the Holocaust, Crane (played with creepy sincerity by Greg Kinnear) is a charming and likable family man who uses his overnight success to seduce every woman he meets, recording his conquests on videotape with the help of his techie wingman (Willem Dafoe). But as word of...

A film doesn't have a responsibility to be timeless . In fact, as an art form, cinema works best as a reflection of the era in which it was made. But sometimes art reveals how little we've actually changed as a culture, for better or worse, as in the case of two new releases from Twilight Time, starting with No Down Payment (1957), an early canary-in-coal mine criticism of America's post-war obsession with capitalism that is still accurate enough to give anyone the shivers - Republican or Democrat! Ensconced in a perfectly landscaped neighborhood full of houses no one can quite afford, a gaggle of upwardly mobile residents are introduced to the newest members of the club: newlyweds David & Jean Martin who are quickly co-opted into a parade of marital problems including alcoholism, overspending, thwarted ambition, overt racism and rape. Sly subverting the old adage, "If you lived here, you'd be home by now!" director Martin Ritt elevates the melo...

Hammer Films may have kickstarted the Euro-horror scene with 1958's Horror of Dracula , but its influence traveled far and wide, eventually circling the globe to inspire a series of Japanese vampire films produced under the Toho banner gathered here as The Bloodthirsty Trilogy . 1970's The Vampire Doll is the flat-out creepiest of the bunch, although the title is a bit of a misnomer. Lifting its major plot twist from Poe's The Fact in the Case of M. Valdemar (and Roger Corman's film adaptation in Tales of Terror ), vampirism never comes into play, but director Michio Yamamoto creates a Gothic-funhouse atmosphere just the same. With reflective cat eyes, long black hair and a goosebump-inducing grin, his "ghost-girl" antagonist is a tragically terrifying figure. The subsequent sequels, Lake of Dracula (1971) and Evil of Dracula (1974) steal more liberally from the Hammer horror model, going so far as to cast a "head vampire" in full Christo...

When it comes to the giallo genre, fans can be just as obsessive in their pursuit of obscure titles as the hyper-violent, sexually deviant killers that feature in them so prominently. Death Smiles on a Murderer (1973) actually straddles the line between a typical over-the-top giallo mystery and a supernatural story straight out of the Italian Gothic tradition. Arriving with no memory at the home of a pair of wealthy landowners, Greta (Ewa Aulin) seems content to bounce between affairs with both husband and wife, covering her mysterious backstory with a trail of dead bodies, including an overly curious doctor (Klaus Kinski) convinced she holds the key to his scientific research. Directed by sleaze-maestro Joe D'Amato (using his real name for the first time) the film is a kitchen-sink conglomeration of incest, murder, sex and super-science crafted with a sloppy sort of style. The period setting makes the film feel like a better-made cousin to some of Jess Franco's output...

After the death of the slasher genre in the late '80s (and before its rebirth as a series of self-aware inside jokes in the late '90s) the horror genre found a comfortable groove on home video. All that was required was a splashy title and eye-catching artwork to lure in the 2 for 1 rental audience. But, quite often, the freedom afforded filmmakers at this level produced some legitimate classics. Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988) isn't one of them. But it is a well-meaning tribute to classic sci-fi schlock like The Blob and Invaders from Mars that is far cleverer that its title suggests. Setting up camp under their extraterrestrial big top, a clown-car full of pasty-faced antagonists hunt down the residents of a small town, imprisoning them in cotton candy cocoons and drinking their blood through crazy straws. Written and directed by the Chiodo brothers, who pitched in on the Critters series among others, there's certainly no lack of effort expended o...

As captured on film, 1970-something New York City has an almost tactile quality: gritty, grey and dangerous. It's the perfect backdrop for a movie like The Seven Ups (1973), a crime drama with several ties to The French Connection , including star Roy Scheider, technical advisor Sonny Grosso and stunt coordinator Bill Hickman who stages a mid-film thrill ride through crowded city streets that deserves to be on the all-time car chase top ten list! Heading up an elite unit of supercops who specialize in crimes worth at least a seven-year sentence (hence the title), Buddy Manucci (Scheider) has been getting inside information on the local bad guys from his childhood pal, Vito (Tony Lo Bianco). But Vito has been playing both sides, and now a string on mafia kidnappings throws suspicion on Buddy's team as dirty cops. The Seven Ups has so many things going for it - including a passionate performance from Scheider, an ominously epic musical score and the aforementioned chase ...

The follow-up release to Arrow Video's voluminous collection of early films from Japanese genre director Seijun Suzuki is actually more entertaining and approachable than the first installment. Once again, the set contains five films that have never even premiered on DVD in their native country, let alone Blu-ray, marking Suzuki's transition into gangster / thriller program films designed to support higher-profile releases. Two titles - The Sleeping Be a st Within and Smashing the O-Line - feature a pair of journalists determined to expose the drug and human trafficking business. Eight Hours of Terror uses a disaster-film story structure as bank robbers hijack a bus full of eclectic passengers. The Man with a Shotgun transposes the Hollywood western scenario with a remote logging camp as a lone wolf seeking his fiancée’s killers winds up hired as the local sheriff. While Tokyo Knights brings up the rear as the most unusual film of the lot, turning the story of a young...

Hailed as a pioneering piece of sci-fi television or dismissed as a monster-of-the-week rip-off of The Twilight Zone , depending on who you ask, The Outer Limits , which premiered on ABC in 1963 is still a veritable goldmine of outré ideas and low budget execution. Built around an hour-long format, the stories often focused on alien intelligences, sometimes benign and misunderstood, other times intent on mankind's destruction. While it doesn't have the cache of Rod Serling's creation, the series, which ran for two seasons, nevertheless lodged in an entire generation's subconscious with a string of episodes attempting things never before seen on network television, introducing some of the most outrageous costumed creations outside of a Roger Corman film along with a parade of soon-to-be high profile guest stars like Robert Culp, Martin Sheen, Leonard Nimoy and Bruce Dern. Kino Lorber's box set packages the entire first in high-definition for the very first tim...

With the release of his fifth feature film, Deep Red (1975), Dario Argento was probably starting to believe his own hype. As the “Italian Hitchcock,” he’d proven himself a bankable director of international thrillers (and one obscure Western) who’d inspired hundreds of imitators in his own country and abroad. The competition was getting fierce. So Argento fired off one last salvo into the crowded giallo genre that would end the debates and put him firmly back on top. Deep Red is one of those films that catch a director working at the top of his game working with deceptive ease. David Hemmings, in a variation of his role in Blow Up , is the witness to a brutal crime who believes he saw a vital clue to the killer’s identity…but can’t quite recall the evidence of his own eyes. With the help of a nosy reporter (possible killer #1) and a fellow musician (possible killer #2), Hemmings stays one step ahead of a string of vicious murders that target anyone involved in the crime. Unl...

Inspired by the "bystander effect" documented after the 1964 rape and murder of Kitty Genovese where 37 witness allegedly did nothing to stop the attack, The Incident (1967) is constructed like a modern-day disaster film, introducing a eclectic cast of subway passengers who find themselves tormented by a pair of loose cannons (played to the hilt by Tony Musante and Martin Sheen) on a late-night ride to Times Square. As the duo pokes and prods for weak spots, no one bothers to lift a finger, content to allow the verbal and physical abuse to continue until someone else intervenes. It's a shameful game of chicken amongst strangers who count on anonymity as their only precarious protection. Shot in authentically urban black and white, but actually filmed on a clever subway set, The Incident does a wonderful job setting the stage for its stop-start morality play. Nicholas Baehr's script takes its time arranging each passenger's personal baggage then lets its a...

Much like the early work of Tim Burton, the films of director Frank Henenlotter exist in their own twisted universe. Only instead of a gothic suburban fairyland, Basket Case (1982) puts down stakes in a seedy Times Square hotel populated by an endearingly colorful collection of hookers, thieves and pimps. The newest tenant is Duane Bradley (Kevin Van Hentenryck), a naive upstate import whose most defining characteristic is the large wicker basket he carries under his arm. What's in the basket? Why, his separated Siamese twin, Belial, who looks more like a stumpy octopus, on a mission of revenge against the doctors who performed their illegal operation and "broke up the band," so to speak. Inheriting the "Midnight Movie" mantle from Rocky Horror (it had a two year run at one famous NYC theater), Basket Case wormed its way into the horror genre like a venereal disease. But Henenlotter's film has a DIY aesthetic that's charming even when it's...

Just a year after releasing Shadows and Fog - a film ensconced in the fog of 1920's German Expressionism - Woody Allen went and made the most modern film of his career. Husband and Wives (1992) is populated with the director's familiar group of urban elitists second-guessing their suspiciously shallow lives, but told with a hip visual style full of jump cuts, handheld shots and documentary confessionals. It's a refreshing change of pace that has an angry edge lacking in the rest of Allen's work. After their surprise separation announcement, Jack and Sally (Sydney Pollack and Judy Davis) bounce between rebound relationships and shallow sexual fulfillment. But their situation has an unintended effect on Gabe and Judy (Allen and Mia Farrow), who find their own previously stable relationship now falling apart. Allen doesn't rely on comic relief to ease the pressure; Husbands and Wives is a brutal parade of petty arguments and passive-aggressive bickering. An...

Having established himself as the premiere purveyor of the rather grungy and depressing British Kitchen-Sink movement with A Taste of Honey and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner , director Tony Richardson spun about 180-degrees with 1963's joyful adaptation of Tom Jones , a giddy romp through 17th century England following the amorous adventures of a well-to-do bastard who was, by all accounts, "born to hang." While the rampant sexism may be as humorously out-of-date as the early Bond films, Albert Finney could charm the pants off 99% of the #MeToo movement with his star-making turn as the chivalrous but weak-willed hero desperately trying elevate his station and earn the love of his beloved Sophie Western (Susannah York). Raised as foundling by a wealthy landowner, Tom is blessed with dashing good looks and a heart of gold. Unfortunately, he's also a bit naive about the rules and regulations involved with aristocratic life. Framed for a pregnancy he d...

Now that streaming has become the de facto source of entertainment for most people under thirty, the doors have opened for courageous niche companies to take a chance on new material that hasn't been repurposed, repackaged and resold for the umpteenth time. Case in point, Arrow's limited edition box set Seijun Suzuki: The Early Years Volume 1 , which gathers five of the director's "youth" movies that have never seen the light of day outside Japan. Suzuki, probably best known for his stylish yakuza films like Branded to Kill that irked studio superiors, proves here he can work elegantly within the studio system, injecting some creative inspiration into otherwise cut-and-paste formulaic fare. Releasing films at a ridiculous pace to take advantage of passing fads, Nikkatsu Studios latched onto the burgeoning youth culture - most likely inspired by James Dean's iconic performance in Rebel Without A Cause - showcasing their own pantheon of juvenile delinqu...

The opening credits of The L-Shaped Room (1962), in which our main character tours the seedier side of London in search of an affordable flat, visually places the film comfortably within the "Kitchen Sink" category: a creative movement that shifted the spotlight to working-class protagonists struggling against social forces beyond their control. From domestic drama to controversial political issues to the mundane workings of every day life, the glamorized escapism of Hollywood was eschewed in favor of the harsh realities of British life. But director Bryan Forbes, despite ticking all the necessary boxes, manages to keep a toe in more traditional waters. While the film certainly has its share of "angry young men," there's an underlying message of acceptance and forgiveness that softens the blow. Pregnant and alone, Jane Fosset (Leslie Caron) rents a room in the only boarding house she can afford, populated by an odd - but not entirely off-putting - cast of ch...

At first glance Forever Amber (1947) could easily be mistaken for yet another sprawling piece of escapist filmmaking tied to a scandalous best-selling novel full of racy material that slipped past the production code under the guise of a seventeenth-century royal romance. Point in fact, that's exactly what Otto Preminger's film is; but the director makes so little attempt to camouflage the seedier elements of the plot that Forever Amber winds up feeling a bit more modern for its honest portrayal of a scheming social climber who sleeps her way to a title...but still loses the man she loves. Orphaned at birth and raised among a quiet farming community, Amber St. Clair (Linda Darnell) jumps at the chance to escape her fate as a housewife by tagging along with an idealistic soldier, Bruce Carlton (Cornel Wilde), who hopes to secure his own future with a commission from the newly crowned King Charles II (George Sanders). Despite being in love with her own ambitions, Amber fal...