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Yakuza Cop: The Assassin (Yukio Noda, 1970)
Has the output of a commercial film studio ever matched the sheer level of NO RULES anarchy exhibited by Japan’s Toei studios during the early 1970s? Well, I can’t say for certain, and of course Toei...
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Purani Haveli (‘Mansion of Evil’) (Shyam & Tulsi Ramsay, 1989)
First off, I will need to begin this review with an apology / disclaimer, stating that my knowledge of Indian cinema is minimal, bordering on non-existent. So if you’re looking for an informative and...
View ArticleNew Year’s Intermission.
Dear Readers –I trust you had a enjoyable winter solstice / Christmas break, and wish you the very best for the New Year. My apologies for the sluggish pace of recent posting on this blog, but…. eh,...
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Nippon Horrors: Lake of Dracula (Michio Yamamoto, 1971)
To some extent, my fondness for the second of Michio Yamamoto’s trilogy of low-budget Toho gothic horror films stems simply from its name. No, not the original Japanese title, which translates as...
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Nippon Horrors: Genocide / ‘War of the Insects’ (Kazui Nihonmatsu, 1968)
Even when writing a weblog that prides itself on plunging headfirst into discussion of some pretty crazy motion pictures, there are some films that just present so much of a WTF it’s difficult to know...
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Japanese Movie Brochures.
So, I’m back! And to ease us slowly into the small mountain of scanning material I brought back from Japan, let’s start with a no-brainer.For many years now, one of the main forms of film industry...
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Nippon Horrors Supplemental: The Devil’s Harp by Jun Morita (1969)
Written and drawn by Jun Morita from a story by Kyoko Murakami, ‘The Devil’s Harp’ is a rather strange and beautiful one-off manga, originally presented to readers of the popular girls comic-magazine...
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Deathblog: Mike Vraney (1957-2014) & Top Five Something Weird Releases.
I’m afraid I’m a bit late on this one, but it wasn’t until earlier this week that I learned – via a tribute post on Tim Lucas’s blog– that Mike Vraney, founder of the legendary Something Weird Video...
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This Month’s Zatoichi: Tale of Zatoichi(Kenji Misumi, 1962)
Like many other lucky boys of a movie nerd type persuasion I assume, I was overjoyed to find Criterion’s massive Zatoichi Box Set waiting under the Christmas tree back in December. And so, with...
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Old New Worlds: April 1965.
The next instalment in our chronological journey through a pile of ‘New Worlds’ back issue I found in Oxfam last year sees us jumping to April 1965, and issue # 149.Though no doubt packed with as much...
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Five Years.(My Brain Hurts a Lot.)
So you know what the date was, when I hit that “create new weblog” button and made my first post here? February 9th 2009. Yes, to save you counting on your fingers, that's FIVE YEARS, as of last...
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The Songs of Herman Cohen: Horrors of the Black Museum (Arthur Crabtree, 1959)
An outsider in the British film industry of the ‘60s and ‘70s, American ex-pat producer Herman Cohen masterminded a series of low budget horror & exploitation films that were, well… terrible, by...
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The House On The Brinkby John Gordon (Patrick Hardy Books, 1983 / originally...
(Jacket design by Bert Kitchen.)Yet another choice item rescued from the skip at my place of work, this is one of those old hardbacks with the wrap-around illustrated covers and slightly peeling...
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Franco Files: Venus In Furs (1969)
AKA:‘Paroxismus’ (Italy?), ‘Black Angel’ (pre-release/script title), ‘To Fantasma tis Afroditis’ (“The Ghost of Venus”, Greece).Context:Beginning in about mid-1968, Jess Franco spent a couple of years...
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This Week’s Wheatley: To The Devil – A Daughter (Arrow Books, 1960 / first...
To put it plainly, I’m not really a fan of Dennis Wheatley (1897 - 1977). Although “the prince of thriller writers” (as he is heralded on the inside cover of this paperback) wrote extensively on a...
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This Month’s Zatoichi: Tale of Zatoichi Continues (Kazuo Mori, 1962)
It seems that the runaway success of Kenji Misumi‘s Tale of Zatoichi took executives at Daei studios by surprise back in 1962. When ‘Tale of Zatoichi Continues’ hit cinemas barely six months later, it...
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Deathblog: Věra Chytilová (1929 – 2014)
Very sad to hear this week about the passing of Czech filmmaker Věra Chytilová, who directed one of my all-time favourites ‘Sedmikrasky’ (‘Daisies’) in 1966.In the unlikely event that anyone bothered...
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Contest Winners!
Well, the results are in from our fifth anniversary competition bonanza, and first off I feel I must apologise for making the questions so damn difficult. (I suppose it's quite hard to judge these...
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Franco Files: The Blood of Fu Manchu (1968)
AKA:‘Fu Manchú y el Beso de la Muerte’ [Spain], ‘Der Todeskuss des Dr. Fu Manchu’ [“Dr. Fu Manchu’s Kiss of Death”, Germany], ‘Kiss & Kill’ [U.S.A.], ‘Against All Odds’, ‘Kiss of Death’ [U.S. video...
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This Week’s Wheatley: The Devil And All His Works (Book Club Associates, 1977...
My history with Dennis Wheatley’s coffee-table opus ‘The Devil And All His Works’ goes back a long way. During my childhood, a copy used to sit on the ‘expensive hardbacks’ shelf behind the counter at...
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