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This Month’s Zatoichi: Zatoichi & The Chest of Gold (Kazuo Ikehiro, 1964)
The first of four Zatoichi films released in 1964, ‘Zatoichi & The Chest of Gold’ opens with an emblematic combat sequence staged against a black studio background, with our hero dispatching a...
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La Nuit La Plus Longe / ‘Sexus’ (José Bénazéraf, 1965)
Of all the eccentric directors who roamed the hinterlands between art and exploitation in European cinema through the ‘60s and ‘70s, the Moroccan-born, Paris-based José Bénazéraf (1922 – 2012) remains...
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Martian Chronicles (and Bonus Tarzan).
Ok, so first off, I’d like to both offer a quick apology to regular readers for letting my informal once-a-week posting schedule slip a little, and to alert you to the fact that such slippages might be...
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Pan People.
Amid all those artful Penguins, we haven’t had many examples of the more ‘old school’ approach to paperback crime covers on here for a while, so, here’s a cheery trio of UK Pan editions I just picked...
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Content Warning!
As readers who have visited this site in the past week or so will no doubt have noticed, some sensitive soul has finally hit the ‘report objectionable content’ button and subjected Breakfast In The...
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Nippon Horrors: Snake Girl & Silver Haired Witch (Noriaki Yuasa,1968)
Whether by accident or design, 1968 seems to have been a bit of a banner year for Japanese horror films, with such weird delights as The Living Skeleton and Genocide appearing from Shochiku, ‘The Snake...
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Franco Files: Cartes sur Table / ‘Attack of the Robots’ (1966)
By the dawn of the 1960s, hatchet-faced American actor Eddie Constantine had become an pretty iconic figure in European popular cinema, playing Peter Cheyney’s hard-as-nails private eye Lemmy Caution...
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New Frontiers in Scrapbooking.
So, it occurred to me that now might be a good time to post a quick recommendation (or ‘plug’, in the contemporary vernacular) for The British Esperantist, the new paper-based venture from weblogging...
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This Month’s Zatoichi: Zatoichi’s Flashing Sword (Kazuo Ikehiro, 1964)
N.B. As observant readers will have noticed, my attempt to write about one Zatoichi film per month has slipped up a little during this summer’s regrettable posting collapse. Thankfully though, this...
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Franco Files: Bloody Moon (1981)
In 1981, a group of callous German producers sparked a major incident in the esoteric world of horror movie sub-categorisation, when they thoughtlessly invited the ‘80s American Slasher Film to make...
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Sweater off / Dead: A ‘Bloody Moon’ Fashion Show.
Stylistically speaking, I think it could well be said that Jess Franco never really DID the 1980s. Sure, he made a lot of films in the 1980s, but in purely aesthetic terms, he never really seems to...
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This Month’s Second Zatoichi: Fight, Zatoichi, Fight! (Kenji Misumi, 1964)
When Zatoichi surrenders his ride in a palanquin chair to a young mother struggling with her newborn baby, a tragic misunderstanding sees the poor woman falling victim to the blades of a pack of...
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The Pan Book of Horror Stories edited by Herbert Van Thal (1959 / 12th...
So, check out what I recently found skulking on the goodwill shelf in a café in Laugharne, South-West Wales. A £2 donation to the local cat welfare charity (appropriately enough), and it was...
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The Night The Screaming Stops: Being the Seventh Annual Stereo Sanctity /...
Cross-posted with Stereo Sanctity.Every year, I find myself wondering how the hell I’ll manage to put together another full 80 minutes of top drawer horror-themed music in time for next Halloween…. and...
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The Watcher by the Threshold by John Buchan (Digit, 1962 / Originally...
Did you know that John Buchan, remembered these days almost solely for ‘The 39 Steps’, also wrote a “weird and shuddering tale of the Scottish backwoods”?Neither did I until I stumbled upon this one on...
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Valkoinen Peura / ‘The White Reindeer’ (Erik Blomberg, 1952)
Although the roots of Finland’s film industry date back to the silent era, relatively few features made in the Finnish language have travelled beyond the country’s borders over the years, and its...
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Shadow Over Mount Sharon by Frances Y. McHugh (Belmont Tower, 1968)
Yet another addition to my collection of ’60 / ‘70s gothic horror/romance paperbacks. I’ve pretty much given up buying these because they’re so interchangeable and there’s just so damn many of them,...
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Deathblog: Ken Takakura (1931 - 2014)
Japanese movie fans are today reeling from the news that Ken Takakura, an absolute titan of the country’s popular film culture, has passed away at the age of 83.Though predictably little known...
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This Month’s Zatoichi: Adventures of Zatoichi (Kimiyoshi Yasuda, 1964)
Arriving at a remote market town a few days before New Year’s Eve with the intention of watching the first dawn of the new year from the summit of a nearby mountain, Zatoichi regrettably finds his...
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Two-Fisted Tales: The Lost Continent by Edgar Rice Burroughs (Tandem 1977,...
After posting the covers of some Edgar Rice Burroughs paperbacks a few months ago, I promised myself I’d finally give some of his writing a try, and, well, here we go.Moreso than a Tarzan jungle...
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