Boredoms: Soul Discharge
This is no unique story. Soul Discharge was the gateway for a lot of people who, like me, saw it one day and wondered what the hell it was.
Read moreTag Archives: Japan
Searching for Odin, My Love
On the Cultural Gutter, I am Searching for Odin, My Love — one of the most expensive, most lavish, most boring, and most infamous anime flops of all time.
Read moreThe Invisible Man in Japan
The Japanese entries into the Invisible Man sweepstakes might not have been an official part of the series, but they certainly hold their own against Universal’s films.
Read moreA European Vampire in Japan
Whatever shortcomings Nobuo Nakagawa’s Lady Vampire Has are not enough to counter its chaotic appeal. It may be less gory than his next film, and it may make no sense, but it has an enthusiastic willingness to be weird.
Read moreAsia-Pol
Despite secret lairs and spy gadgets, Asia-pol plays things straight where other Shaw Bros. espionage efforts reveled in the most outlandish sci-fi aspects of spy films.
Read moreMars Men
Mars Men kicks off with a little kid stumbling upon a hidden cave in which he finds a small statue of Yud Wud Jaeng. The kid insists on calling him “Hanamajin”, and the rest of the cast follows suit.
Read moreTamiya Iemon is the Worst: Ghost Stories of Yotsuya
There are many tales of love, bitterness and vengeful ghosts, but like a certain Scottish play, Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan is unique in having a curse associated with it.
Read moreKuroneko
A lone samurai making his way home late at night meets a defenseless woman. So begins the horror of Kaneto Shindô’s tale of ghosts, vengeance, and the wrongs visited upon women by entitled men.
Read moreBattles without Honor and Humanity II
I’ve been sitting here trying to think of an adequate way to describe exactly what it is that Sonny Chiba does and wears in this second film in Kinji Fukasaku’s highly enjoyable, highly influential Battles without Honor and Humanity series of films that delve into the world of organized crime and the role it played in rebuilding post-war Japan. The
Read moreThey Were 11
They Were 11 is an interesting take on sci-fi anime from the eighties, and definitely a marked departure from the space operas overflowing from the previous decades and the wham-bam sci-fi actioners that defined the eighties. There is really only one action scene in the entire movie, and that’s a pie fight.
Read moreA Gaggle of Golgo 13
Golgo 13 was (is) a long-running Japanese comic book aimed primarily at bitter guys in dead-end salaryman jobs who harbored daydreams of being tough-as-nails murderous sex machines but, in reality, were just nerdy guys reading a comic book on the train before they started a day full of kissing their boss’s ass and shouting out the company cheer.
Read moreNippon Girls: Japanese Pop, Beat &Bossa Nova 1966-70
Needless to say, if you want to reenact the dance contest scene from >Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster, Nippon Girls: Japanese Pop, Beat & Bossa Nova 1966-70 is the ideal soundtrack. Or perhaps it’s the swinging, strobe-lit nightclub from your favorite Pinky Violence film you want to recreate — you know, the type where Miki Sugimoto or Reiko Oshida might
Read moreS & M Hunter
Liking it may make me a horrible person. Still, it won’t prevent me from maintaining my regular program of affectionately patting all human beings under four feet tall on the head, slinging old ladies over my back two at a time to carry them across the street, and cooking elaborate meals for homeless people.
Read moreGodzilla vs. The Sea Monster
Godzilla producer Tomoyuki Tanaka determined the need for a new Godzilla film for the upcoming 1966 holiday season, and further decreed that said entry should be oriented toward a teen audience and feature a South Seas theme.
Read moreFemale Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41
Emboldened, perhaps, by the success of the first film and the amount of creative leeway given him by Toei, Ito this time largely dispensed with genre trappings and delivered a film that was even more obviously the product of a singular directorial vision.
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