This Gun for Hire (1942)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Melanie Novak writes about the Golden Age of Hollywood, infusing her weekly movie reviews with history, gossip, and the glamour of the studio era. You can read her reviews at http://www.melanienovak.com and follow her on Instagram @novak_melanie or Twitter @MelanieANovak. Every fiction writer has experienced the moment when a character takes over […]
Baphomet (2021)
The Richardson family have a home that a Satanic cult wants. When real estate offers don’t work, leader Henrik Brnadr (Giovanni Lombardo Radice, House on the Edge of the Park, Stagefright, Cannibal Ferox and the reason I watched this movie) decrees that his followers make the lives of our protagonists difficult. So difficult, in fact, that they have […]
Bite Me! (2004)
Strip clubs are, by and large, incredibly boring places. Take it from someone who may have nearly married a dancer and who was also with someone for a long time who covered them. They’re only exciting if you’re drunk, have money and no access to women. Well, unless they’re the club in the movie, Strip-O-Sauraus, […]
Shirubaa (1999)
Jun Shirogane’s entire family was murdered by criminals while she was at a karate tournament, which makes her the perfect first member of the Japanese secret police branch known as the Fear of God, getting the secret identity of Jun Silver and becoming a pro wrestler. Are you shocked that I loved this movie or surprised […]
Zubekô banchô: Yume wa yoru hiraku (1970)
The first movie in the Delinquent Girl Boss series — perhaps not to be confused with 1970’s Stray Cat Rock: Delinquent Girl Boss* — this Kazuhiko Yamaguchi (Sister Street Fighter, Wolfguy: Enraged Lycanthrope) film introduces Rika Kageyama (Reiko Ôshida), the titular girl boss who will appear in a series of four movies. We find Rika graduating from reform school and […]
The Guyver (1991)
How weird was it when The Guyver just randomly showed up in my local video store, unannounced, bringing Japan weirdness into my 19-year-old movie rental obsession life? When Dr. Tetsu Segawa steals the Guyver unit from the villainous company he’s been working for, his daughter’s boyfriend Sean accidentally finds it, puts it in his backpack […]
Bijo no harawata (1986)
Entrails of a Beautiful Woman is the sequel to Entrails of a Virgin and was directed and written by Kazuo “Gaira” Komizu, who also made the family-friendly movies Guzoo: The Thing Forsaken by God – Part I and Rabbit sex: Joshigakusei shûdan bôkô jiken. After a young woman is used and abused by the Yakuza — and […]
Nosutoradamusu no daiyogen (1974)
In 1969, Tsutomy “Ben” Goto was writing for women’s magazines and watching the moon landing. That’s when he remembered reading about man walking on the lunar surface in the quatrains of Nostradamus*. Michel de Nostredame was a French astrologer and physician, but also a seer who wrote Les Prophéties, a collection of 942 quatrains — […]
Stacy (2001)
In the near future — 20XX? — every girl between the ages of 14 and 16 years old begins to experience NDH — Near Death Happiness — a period of immense joy before dying and becoming a Stacy, or a zombie, which must be chopped into pieces in a process called Repeat-Kill by the garbage […]
Blood Type: Blue (1977)
Also known as Blue Christmas, this movie is somehow way ahead of its time, as UFO abductees return to Japan with blue blood, which upsets everyone else because, well, do racist people really need a reason? And this also has a deeper story inside it, a remembrance of at least 17 Japanese citizens that were taken […]
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