Movieline Online

While the term  giallo  has burrowed its way into the horror lexicon—complete with box sets, special editions, and even a name-drop in the latest  Scream  installment—its European antecedent, the  krimi , remains largely uncharted territory for most genre fans. A series of German-produced murder mysteries, frequently based on the works of Edgar Wallace, the  krimi  finally gets a spotlight in “Region A” thanks to Eureka Entertainment, which presents a compelling collection that shows what all the fuss is about. The Curse of the Yellow Snake  (1963) leans closer to the  Dr. Mabuse  supervillain series, with a mad "oriental" villain (brace yourself for some outdated racism and makeup effects) seeking to fulfill an ancient prophecy that would allow China to dominate the world. Packed with back-stabbings and secret ceremonies, this one feels more like a Hammer adventure than a straightforward mystery. Things kick off in earnest with  Th...

Although it's grandfather of modern outbreak movies, 1971's  The Andromeda Strain  feels more like a reaction to the technological tsunami of  2001: A Space Odyssey  than a trendsetter in its own right.  Based on Michael Crichton's novel, this is a film that has an endless amount of enthusiasm for the scientific method and emergency quarantine procedures; it's the cinematic equivalent of a TV disclaimer announcement, listing possible side effects and health warnings.  Suffice to say, the thrills are few and far between.  But director Robert Wise brings some signature style to this story of an alien organism that wipes out a small New Mexico town...and threatens to destroy the world.  Dr. Jeremy Stone (Arthur Hill) and his team of academic all-stars are rushed to an underground government facility called Wildfire, specifically designed to handle extraterrestrial threats of the microbiological sort.  After working their way ...

Italy may not be the cradle of cinema, but it has produced enough influential auteurs and essential films to fill an opera house. Yet somehow, the name Valerio Zurlini rarely even makes the program, let alone earns a standing ovation. With just eight features over two decades, Zurlini’s body of work is modest compared to giants like Fellini or Visconti — but no less deserving of attention. Now, Radiance Films’ new limited-edition Blu-ray of  Girl With a Suitcase , easily surpassing the long out-of-print NoShame disc, should finally bring some long-overdue recognition to Zurlini’s delicate artistry. At the heart of the film is Claudia Cardinale, delivering one of her finest early performances. She plays Aida, a struggling nightclub singer abandoned by a careless lover — literally left on the side of the road with nothing but her suitcase. When her ex’s younger brother, a naïve teenager named Lorenzo (Corrado Pani), impulsively reaches out to help, Zurlini sets the stage for a h...

As the title implies,  Yakuza Wives  isn't just about mobsters; it's about the women who live in their shadows — and often, step out of them. Director Hideo Gosha puts a unique spin on the all-too-familiar genre, dragging it into the neon-drenched ‘80s complete with big hair, big boobs and high stakes power plays. At the center is Migiwa Awazu (Shima Iwashita), the "elder sister" and de facto leader of the Domoto Family while her husband serves out a prison stretch. But Migiwa isn’t content to just arrange tea parties for the “prison wives club” — she takes advantage of an all-out gang war to make sure her man comes home to a throne. Meanwhile, her naïve younger sister falls for a rival yakuza with ambitions of his own, setting up a collision course of blood, betrayal, and broken hearts. Yakuza Wives  nails a particular moment in Japanese cinema: the glossy, turbocharged ‘80s, when crime films looked slicker but stayed just as brutal underneath. Yet it’s Shima Iwashit...

The peaks and valleys of Japanese cinema left plenty of filmmakers behind. The shifts from theaters to television to DTV and back again reflected an industry chasing money rather than any artistic endgame. Directors like Seijun Suzuki and Shohei Imamura, who launched their careers during the height of the studio system at Nikkatsu, found themselves out of fashion after only a decade or so. But critical reappraisal of their early work gave both a second shot at the success that had eluded them the first time around. Seijun Suzuki’s  A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness  (1977) was his first theatrical feature in a decade, bridging the gap between his earlier stylized action pictures and the art-film renaissance still to come. Reiko (Yoko Shiraki) is a rising star in the world of women’s golf, so much so that a fashion company handpicks her to become their top model and spokesperson. But Reiko’s ascent attracts the attention of a rabid fan (Kyoko Enami), whose obsession escalates into b...

‘80s Icons like Stallone, Schwarzenegger and Van Damme were action heroes first, romantic leads second…usually a very distant second. But as the action genre diversified in the ‘90s, audiences demanded a bit more than the usual fare of explosions and roundhouse kicks.  Enter Andy Lau, Hong Kong’s answer to Tom Cruise, a smoldering leading man who provided instant chemistry with his female co-stars and managed to be a convincing bad-ass at the same time. All that and a beautiful singing voice too. In  The Adventurers  (1995) Lau stars as Yan, a Cambodian refugee whose parents’ involvement with the CIA soon leaves him an orphan.  Vowing revenge against the arms dealer responsible, Yan works his way into the Thai military and finally gets his chance after being placed as an undercover asset in San Francisco.  There he woos Crystal, the daughter of his sworn enemy, and marries into the family.  But will his feelings spoil his one chance for ...

At this point in the never-ending flood of Shaw Brothers titles glutting the market it comes down to one question:   is this one really worth it ?  Even collectors with a raging case of FOMO have to draw the line somewhere. So 88 Films release of  Lady with a Sword  (1971) is a good news/bad news situation.  The good news?  It’s  definitely  a keeper.  The bad news? Time to make some more room in the budget. After her sister’s murder, Fei-fei (Lily Ho) vows to settle the score with those responsible.  Unfortunately, that just so happens to be her betrothed from a marriage arranged in childhood. Torn between family obligations and righteous vengeance, Fei-fei and her young nephew must fight off a trio of bad guys – and overprotective in-laws – to see justice done. While set in the same sweeping historical period as most Shaw Brothers films,  Lady with a Sword  keeps the story personal and is all the...

France’s critical reassessment of Hollywood genre pictures gave credibility to filmmakers whose work had been dismissed as lightweight entertainment back in the U.S. And no genre got more love than  film noir , a label added after-the-fact to post-war pulp thrillers that focused on the darker side of the American dream.  Director Alain Corneau puts these concepts in a cultural blender, reinterpreting the moody, morally ambiguous books and movies that inspired him to produce a trio of films that are both uniquely  noir  and uniquely French at the same time. Police Python 375  (1976) takes its cue from  Dirty Harry  but was actually adapted from a 1946 novel used as the basis for  The Big Clock  and the Kevin Costner-Gene Hackman thriller  No Way Out .  Yves Montand stars as aging supercop Marc Ferrot who must investigate  himself  after his lover is murdered by a superior officer.  Covering up evidence a...

The British “kitchen sink” films of the ‘50s and ‘60s set a new highwater mark for social realism amongst the working class.  Focused on characters typically deemed  unworthy  of cinematic attention, struggling to survive in a society that looked down upon their very existence, these were movies that tackled subjects escapist fare would not.  Fast forward a few decades to Clifford Choi’s  Hong Kong, Hong Kong  (1983), which embraces the same sympathy for the tired, poor, huddled masses entering the bustling city in hope for a better life…but finding instead an entirely different set of troubles. Si Sun (Cherie Chung) is an illegal immigrant forced to use her body to pay for her room and board.  But a chance meeting with a kind-hearted boxer, Yuen Sang (Alex Mann), adds a dash of hope to her drab existence.  A matchmaker pairs her with a widower, promising an ID card if she can give birth to a son, but Si Sun’s relationship with...

American culture has always had a hard time reconciling eroticism and art.  Maybe it’s our Puritan heritage.  Maybe it’s our deep-seated fear of naked ankles.  Or maybe it’s because we crave violence in every form but the sight of Rachel’s nipples   on a  Friends  re-run   is a national emergency.  Either way, the rest of the world seems to handle it just fine.  In fact, a few hundred years ago the ruling classes in Asia and Europe were renowned for the hedonistic behavior.  Case in point,  An Amorous Woman of Tang Dynasty  (1984), one of the final films produced at Shaw Brothers studio, which follows the softcore adventures of a female poet who refuses to conform to social norms expected of her gender. Independently wealthy thanks to her reputation as an artist and her former role as a concubine, Yuan-Gi (Patricia Ha) dabbles in business, religion and casual sex hoping to find satisfaction beyond ...

Some horror movies are made out of straw, so precariously constructed that the slightest narrative breeze will unravel the whole film.  But Jeff Leiberman’s  Blue Sunshine  (1977) is made out of bricks, baby!  Even with all its flaws, there’s just something about the ominous inevitability of each scene that glues it together, leading to a generational apocalypse there’s no chance of preventing.  Turn on, tune in, and drop  dead ! After one of his friends goes on a murderous rampage, Jerry Zipkin (Zalman King) accidently sets himself up as the fall guy. Now on the run from the cops, Zippy’s only chance to clear his name is to solve the mystery behind “Blue Sunshine,” a strain of LSD sold at Stanford ten years prior which seems to be having deadly effects on its users including headaches, alopecia and psychotic episodes.   With some minor tweaking,  Blue Sunshine  could pass as a major studio thriller.  But it woul...

While current female action films like  Furiousa  and  The Marvels  are facing a premeditated sexist backlash, 1996’s  The Long Kiss Goodnight  remains a mysteriously beloved bit of disposable ‘90s trash.  Starring Geena Davis as an amnesiac superspy whose reemergence onto the political chess board makes her and her family a target for her previous employers - the U.S. government – this Shane Black written, Renny Harlin directed thriller is a chauvinistic wet dream full of slow-motion gunplay, perfectly choreographed explosions and plenty of dick jokes. After living 8 years as a small-town housefrau hottie, Samantha (Geena Davis) finds out she’s actually  Charlie , a highly trained assassin who disappeared into her own cover story.  But with the help of a low-rent private detective (Samuel L. Jackson), she recovers her identity – and her special set of skills -  just in time to foil a terrorist plot, bring home the ba...

What begins as a lighthearted battle of the sexes turns into a spectacular martial arts display in Lau Kar-leung’s  The Lady is the Boss  (1983).  The legendary Hong Kong stuntman/director fills his film with a cast of all-stars and fun callbacks to previous hits while riffing on the  modern woman  attitudes imported from the U.S.  Mei Ling (Kara Hui), American-born and raised, arrives in Hong Kong to take over her father’s struggling martial arts school. But her gender doesn’t cause nearly as much controversy as her business tactics, which includes recruiting new students from discos, brothels and gay bars.  While the older students buy in to her trendy techniques, the old master (played by Lau Kar-leung himself) considers it a betrayal of his conversative teachings.  So when a local triad threatens revenge, he’s torn between saving face and saving his beloved school. Miraculously  The Lady is the Boss  manages to never o...

Although the  Bond  films made supervillains a household name, the idea of a megalomaniacal, mentally-unstable, criminal mastermind had been a literary staple for quite a while.  From Sherlock Holmes’ arch nemesis Professor Moriarty to the yellow peril of Fu Manchu, the concept of a bad guy out to conquer not just his own zip code but the  whole world  seemed to be a product of the pending international threat and paranoia that led to WW1. France had Fantomas which inspired a series of books and films while Germany had Dr. Mabuse, a master of disguise and mesmerism whose web of spies infiltrated every corner of the criminal underground.  The first film version in 1922 was brought to the screen by none other than director Fritz Lang who was convinced to reboot the franchise in 1960’s  The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse , which finds the doctor – or perhaps someone inspired by his nihilistic tendencies – back on the world stage in a big way. So wi...

Cashing in on both the slasher craze  and  heavy metal mania, 1986’s  Trick or Treat  is much better than its capitalistic origins might suggest.  Directed with a sympathetic ear for high-school outcasts everywhere, Charles Martin Smith’s film works itself into a frenzy of big hair, guitar licks and Tipper Gore-era rebellion but keeps things grounded by focusing on characters rather than its over-the-top killer. Tired of being ridiculed by all the jocks and cheerleaders in school, metalhead Eddie “Ragman” Weinbauer gets his wish for revenge thanks to a test-pressing of rock star hero Sammi Curr’s posthumous record.  When played backwards, incantations bring the devil-worshipping shredder back into the  real  world to settle the score with Eddie’s bullies…and anyone else that gets in his way! Shepherded into production by the same writing team responsible for  Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge , the two films share a lot of...

To paraphrase director Piers Haggard,  Venom  is a film that’s not schlocky enough for the blood n’ guts horror crowd and perhaps too classy for its own good.  It is, in fact, a rather straightforward thriller that uses a snake-on-the-loose plot device to spice things up a bit.  But the title (and marketing campaign in ’82) sold the film as a successor to “nature run amok” flicks like  The Birds  and  Alligator . The cast includes a who’s who of international stars (Klaus Kinski, Oliver Reed, Susan George) and puts their larger than life personalities to good use, trapping them inside a British townhouse after a failed kidnapping plot with an army of cops outside and one deadly Black Mamba inside.  There are one or two solid scares, but the majority of the plot focuses on the police siege, led by no-nonsense captain Nicol Williamson (Merlin in Excalibur ), and his attempts to outwit Kinski’s well-dressed terrorist.   Venom ...

You don’t need to be an expert in martial arts to spot someone who’s at the top of their game.  And in the case of the Venom Mob that includes  six  “someones” - Lu Feng, Chiang Sheng, Phillip Kwok, Sun Chien, Lo Man and Wai Pak -  first brought together in director Chang Cheh’s  Five Deadly Venoms  (1978),  who work together like a lethal version of the Harlem Globetrotters, passing off opponents with carefully choreographed kung-fu skills that are unlike anything else in the Hong Kong action catalog. Cheh reunites them all for 1979’s  The Daredevils  (aka  Shaolin Daredevils ) in which a group of friends plan a long con to get revenge against a corrupt government official who murdered their friend.  Earning money as a tumbling act, the gang works their way into the bad guy’s good graces by posing as arms dealers while secretly setting the stage for his assassination. With long sequences focused on the group’s s...

Hollywood’s painful transition into the ‘70s was marked by several recurring themes both onscreen and off. Counterculture politics and the rise of the film school generation resulted in films that rattled some cages and took intentionally obtuse detours into offbeat territory.  Case in point, 1970’s  Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx , which champions the underdog with a Cinderella gender reversal set in the working-class streets of Dublin.  Quackser (Gene Wilder) himself is a self-employed dung collector, sweeping up horse manure left behind by delivery carts and reselling his “merchandise” back to local gardeners.  But with the mechanization of Dublin on the horizon, Quackser’s dreamy disposition might soon put him out of work permanently.  Enter Zazel (Margot Kidder), a bored and wealthy American studying at Trinity College, who finds Quackser’s candid demeanor and lack of ambition charming.  The two strike up a tenuous ...

The last 20 years or so have been very kind to the reputation of Lucio Fulci.  Once dismissed as an artless, exploitive, misogynistic gorehound, his catalog has been embraced by boutique video labels, proving at least  one  thing:  he's certainly not artless.  And  Don't Torture a Duckling  (1972) is a rare bird indeed, both within Fulci's oeuvre and the  giallo  genre as a whole.  A killer is at large in a rural Italian village, stalking only young boys and leaving their lifeless - but unmolested - bodies for the authorities and press and discover. The suspects pile up quickly:  Patrizia (Barbara Bouchet), an urban outsider and sexual tease....Maciara (Florinda Balkan), a wandering witch doctor...and Guiseppe, the village idiot always teased by the local kids.  Andrea (Tomas Milian) is a reporter who, in true  giallo  fashion, suspects the cops are missing vital clues and begins to search for...

By the time you reach a certain age you remember where you were when important world events happened: the fall of the Berlin Wall, the attack on 9/11, Samuel L. Jackson being torn apart by genetically-enhanced Mako sharks.  It might not have changed the world, but in the annals of pop-culture “jump scare” history,  that scene  in director Renny Harlin’s ridiculously entertaining killer shark movie,  Deep Blue Sea  (1999) has lingered longer than the film itself.  But as a pre-fab popcorn flick, it holds up well against the self-important blockbusters that Hollywood embraced after the turn of the millenium. In pursuit of a cure for Alzheimer’s, a team of scientists increase the brain size in a trio of maneaters to the point where the sharks can strategize against their captors.  And when a hurricane traps them all in a lab sixty feet underwater, the humans are going to need every bit of brain power they can to survive. Made up of equ...

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. But boutique label Visual Vengeance doesn’t even bother to make a distinction.  Their curated collection of SOV and homemade genre cinema makes no apologies for bad taste or low budgets, but it’s a guaranteed good time.  And the two latest additions to their growing library keep the  anything-goes  aesthetic alive with a DIY martial arts epic and schlocky prehistoric sex spoof. 1984’s  Furious  is an early showcase for the Rhee Brothers (Simon and Phillip) who would go on to star in the  Best of the Best  franchise. As choreographers  and  performers the duo put on quite a show, but it’s nothing compared to the bizarre plot unfolding around them.  On a quest to avenge the death of his sister, Simon (Simon Rhee) is lured into a series of deadly confrontations by his former instructor Master Chan (Phillip Rhee) to collect pieces of a mystic amulet.  Each boss battle p...