Ellen (Traci Lords) and Charley Reed (Phillip Troy) are burglars who are on the right side as they work for insurance companies, stealing back things that have been taken by others. This job brings them to the safe of organized crime kingpin Vito Malta (Jorge Rivero), which contains gems taken by his men from a jewelry store. Before you can say, “Why is Traci Lords a never nude in this?” she’s in the shower, fully clothed with her husband, the mission complete.
Her husband, however, is an idiot. Instead of marveling at his luck at getting to take pants on showers with Traci Lords whenever he wants, he decides to not give the jewelry back to the insurance company and fence it with Ellen’s brother Rick Corbit (Zach Galligan). Malta figures this out and his men chase them down, killing Charley, nearly ending Rick’s time on this planet and sending Ellen to the police station.
Detective Alan Little (Jaime Alba) remembers Ellen when she was a jazz singer, so he has a crush on her and allows her to go get revenge.
A PM Entertainment action film, this was directed by Lords’ husband at the time, Brook Yeaton. It’s the kind of action film that if it came on Cinemax at 2:45 a.m. and you were high, you’d probably not get up to turn the channel. In short, the movies that I spend most of my life finding and writing up.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jennifer Upton is an American (non-werewolf) writer/editor in London. She currently works as a freelance ghostwriter of personal memoirs and writes for several blogs on topics as diverse as film history, punk rock, women’s issues, and international politics. For links to her work, please visit https://www.jennuptonwriter.com or send her a Tweet @Jennxldn
No long-time kaiju fan was more pleased than I when rumors began to swirl that Godzilla Minus One – the first Japanese Godzilla film in more than a decade – wasn’t just good. It was great. I didn’t want my expectations to ruin the experience of seeing the film for the first time, so I avoided spoiler-laden websites and subreddits.
Secretly, I was super excited. I hadn’t seen a Godzilla movie on the big screen since the 2014 American series launch Godzilla. A film that left me with the same feeling one has when they’re hungry and they eat bad pizza. It fills you up, but the calories are empty. I never saw any of the sequels because I was now certain that Hollywood, regardless of how much money they spend on effects or how many great actors they cast, will never truly be able to make a great Godzilla movie. It’s a film series that is uniquely Japanese. No other country on earth has had an atomic weapon dropped on it in a time of war. And that makes them uniquely qualified to make movies about an atomic monster. The original 1954 film was infused with melancholy and a foreboding sense that no matter how bad things are, they can always get worse.
Godzilla Minus One recreates that feeling better than any other Godzilla film made since then.
The film begins at the end of WW2. When Japan had nothing. Zero. Then Godzilla shows up and things get worse. Minus One.
Kamikaze pilot Kōichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) abandons his mission and lands on nearby Odo Island with “technical problems.” While there, a giant lizard known by the locals as Gojira goes on a rampage. Once again, Shikishima freezes and cannot bring himself to shoot the monster. Tachibana (Munetaka Aoki), the only other survivor of the attack, blames Shikishima for the death of his comrades.
The next act in the film shows an accurate portrayal of the grim life of post-war Japan where people survived on their wits and the kindness of strangers. Shikishimi, now suffering from PTSD and cultural shame, forms a makeshift family with a young woman named Noriko (Minami Hamabe) and an orphaned toddler named Akiko (Sagae Nagatani.)
He gets a job on a boat sweeping mines from the sea and it isn’t long before his old buddy from Odo Island makes his next appearance. This time he’s huge, having grown even bigger from America’s A-bomb test on Bikini Atoll in the pacific.
The boat team crosses the big guy’s path, and a chase ensues. Despite the film’s paltry (by Hollywood standards) 15-million-dollar budget, the jeopardy in this scene feels real. I’ve always loved it whenever Godzilla swims, but it’s the first time I’ve felt like I was watching Jaws with a kaiju.
When the big guy finally makes landfall and attacks Ginza, it’s one of the best sequences ever achieved by Toho Studios. Not only is the destruction from G’s heat ray astounding in its execution, but it’s also one of the rare times we see Godzilla himself suffer what appears to be painful injuries after unleashing his weapon. (See GMK from 2001 for another great example of this.)
The resulting nuclear explosion blows Oppenheimer’s bullshit a-bomb away. And that’s important. I for one, am pleased as punch to see transnational audiences embrace a low-budget monster movie. IAs I’m writing this, Godzilla Minus One has grossed over 104 million dollars globally and is Oscar nominated for Best Special Effects. It should have been nominated for Best Picture. This movie succeeds on every level where every other budget-bloated major Hollywood 2023 release has failed.
Godzilla Minus One is a compelling drama. It’s also a period piece that’s historically accurate. Are you listening, Ridley Scott? It’s scary, exciting and fun. All for a cool 15 mill. This movie is proof positive that story and well-developed characters matter and you don’t need a billion dollars and 3 hours to do it. Did I mention the film was released globally entirely in Japanese with subtitles? So much for the “audiences don’t like to read” argument.
In the finale, Shikishima joins forces with Tachibana and a team of war veterans to do what the Japanese government can’t do and what the U.S. government won’t do. They defeat Godzilla in a thrilling finale. Or do they? Godzilla has powerful regenerative abilities. In Godzilla 2000 these cells were called Regenerator G-1. Here, they don’t name this ability, but it’s a nice callback for die-hard fans and the end result is the same. Godzilla is never defeated for long in any movie. If it were that easy, he wouldn’t be the star of cinema’s longest running series in history. Kudos to writer/director/effects artist Takashi Yamazaki for achieving something I never thought I’d see in my lifetime. He’s made Godzilla relevant again in a serious way. Without cheesy dubbing.
ARROW invites subscribers to find true love with the very best wild and weird short films! On February 2, Sharp Shorts is the place to be for quick fixes of micro features that will leave you in shock and awe. Creepy, classy, stomach-churning, jaw-dropping, award-winning and even those that have gone on to become full features, Sharp Shorts is the best place to get a shot of Cult if you only have minutes to spare. But be warned, you could also very easily become sucked into spending hours at the mercy of some of the best short filmmakers around!
Titles include Itch, The Wyrm of Bwlch Pen Barras and Smile.
On February 6, dive deep into the mind of Jill Gevargizian, the writer/director of the award-winning ARROW release The Stylist, producer of horror thriller Black Mold and director of the upcoming haunted house chiller Ghost Game. Jill Gevargizian Selects Vol. II makes a selection from ARROW’s esoteric archive, including J-horror, samurai action and Ken Russell madness among her picks.
Titles include One Missed Call, The Leech and Crimes of Passion.
On February 9, check out The Radiance Collection. Founded on a passion for cinema, Radiance Films’ titles are curated from a variety of genres and modes of filmmaking, from arthouse provocateurs to genre classics, and each release is created from the best available materials. Explore this brave brand-new label’s films on a dedicated shelf full of all manner of their titles, from Yakuza to French serial killers to giallo to mafia thrillers, in the Radiance Films collection.
Get into the spirit of St. Valentine on February 14 with Romance is Dead. They say the course of true love never runs smooth, and that’s something of an understatement here on ARROW where the course of true love often features seductive witchcraft, torture, madness, murder, extreme violence and a gorilla. Ah, l’amore!
On February 16, enroll in ARROW’s own film school with Filmmakers on Filmmaking: A collection featuring interviews and commentaries from our vast library of extras that feature some of the coolest and smartest filmmakers in the world discussing their craft, Filmmakers on Filmmaking is a crash course for all budding Cult filmmakers of tomorrow!
Titles include Mike Hodges: A Film-Maker’s Life, Naked Flesh and When Romero Met Del Toro.
On February 19, ARROW takes subscribers Back Inside the Mind of Coffin Joe: Part Two. Cultural icon, anti-establishment statement, sadistic lord of carnival horror! With his iconic long fingernails, top hat and cape, Zé do Caixão (Coffin Joe) was the creation of Brazilian filmmaker José Mojica Marins, who wrote, directed and starred in a series of outrageous movies from 1964 to 2008. The rarely-seen When the Gods Fall Asleepcontinues the series’ blackly comic trajectory as our messianic cult figure sets out to right wrongs, expose corruption and end social unrest. The Strange Hostel of Naked Pleasures brings Zé do Caixão back to the screen as the proprietor of an isolated guest house where, on a dark and stormy night, an eclectic group of strangers seek shelter. In Hellish Flesh, Dr George Medeiros is a brilliant scientist, but a neglectful husband whose wife takes a lover and plans to murder George for his fortune, but the doctor is only disfigured and returns with a plan for revenge! Meanwhile, in Hallucinations of a Deranged Mind, the colleagues of a psychiatric doctor driven to insanity by nightmare visions of Zé do Caixão enlist the character’s creator, José Mojica Marins, to convince the patient that Zé does not exist – but all is not as it seems! Finally, in Embodiment of Evil, Marins returns to the role that made his name one last time, as Zé do Caixão emerges onto the streets of São Paulo in 2008, haunted by ghostly visions and the spirits of past victims, and still in pursuit of the woman who can give him the perfect child. Newly restored from the best available elements and packed with new and archival extras, Back Inside the Mind of Coffin Joe is a love letter to one of the great iconoclasts of horror, who forged his films in the face of military dictatorship and religious censorship to become Brazil’s national Boogeyman.
ARROW continues its ode to Brazilian cinema with Butcher Billy Selects. Brazilian illustrator Billy Butcher – renowned for his art pieces that blend pop art with vintage comic book styles to stupendous effect – has taken his pick of the formidable ARROW catalogue, and chosen a selection of horrors that will thrill, astound and excite – much like his work.
ARROW closes out the month the only possible way: with bloodsoaked battles! On February 23, This Means War. Featuring incredible, brutal, sometimes harrowing – and even sometimes full of crazy creatures – Cult films, ARROW goes to war with a collection of battle-hardened movies so good you’ll be left shell-shocked.
Head over to ARROW to start watching now. Subscriptions are available for $6.99 monthly or $69.99 yearly.
ARROW is available in the US, Canada, the UK and Ireland on the following Apps/devices: Roku (all Roku sticks, boxes, devices, etc), Apple TV & iOS devices, Samsung TVs, Android TV and mobile devices, Fire TV (all Amazon Fire TV Sticks, boxes, etc), and on all web browsers at https://www.arrow-player.com.
With a slickly designed and user-friendly interface, and an unparalleled roster of quality content from westerns to giallo to Asian cinema, trailers, Midnight Movies, filmmaker picks and much, much more, ARROW is the place to go for the very best in on-demand entertainment.
I’ve never seen a movie that looks like The Legend of the Suram Fortress.
Directed by Georgian SSR-born Soviet-Armenian director Sergei Parajanov and Georgian actor Dodo Abashidze, this was the first movie that Parajanov had made in 15 years after being censored by Russia and 4 years in jail for “lewd acts and bribery.” That’s because he was bisexual and he was sentenced to five years in a hard labor camp despite a letter from Andrei Tarkovsky to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, which stated, “In the last ten years Sergei Parajanov has made only two films: Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors and The Colour of Pomegranates. They have influenced cinema first in Ukraine, second in this country as a whole, and third in the world at large. Artistically, there are few people in the entire world who could replace Paradanov. He is guilty – guilty of his solitude. We are guilty of not thinking of him daily and of failing to discover the significance of a master.” The letter was also signed by Robert De Niro, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Leonid Gaidai, Eldar Ryazanov, Yves Saint Laurent, Marcello Mastroianni, Françoise Sagan, Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Luis Buñuel, Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni, Andrei Tarkovsky and Mikhail Vartanov.
This is not the first tragedy in his life, he was married to a Muslim woman who converted to Eastern Orthodox Christianity for him. Her relatives saw this as blasphemy and killed her. Knowing this will make this movie even richer for you, as he lived the pain that his characters do.
Much like The Color of Pomegranates, this film uses tableaux — a static scene containing one or more stationary actors who poses with props and scenery, combining theater and visual art to tell the story — to create a surreal effect as it moves from dramatic image to image, filled with actors who each speak their part within these pieces of motion art.
This is an adaption of a traditional Georgian folk story of Durmishkhan, who has been freed by his master and now wants to buy the freedom of his lover Vardo. He is told another story by a merchant who lost his mother because of the cruel nature of his master. He killed that man and became a Muslim to escape the law.
Durmishkhan works for this man and marries a woman and has a son named Zurab. As his boss retires, he gives the business to him and converts again, this time to being Christian and dreams of the Muslims killing him for his crime.
Vardo becomes a fortune teller who is called upon when the Muslims invade their country. Despite all their efforts, the Suram Fortress is falling. She fortells that a blue-eyed young man from the countryside must be walled inside the fortress alive and it will stand. The bou who she be her son, Zurad, volunteers and gives his life to save the country and Christianity.
The band Voidcraft used this movie for one of their videos, “The Vertical Mammal.”
The Legend of the Suram Fortress feels like a movie that was made before cameras were invented, if that makes sense, something captured through time and delivered to us in the future. Filmed in the grassy scenery of Georgia with all actors facing the camera as we study the frame for its many meanings. It’s presented plainly but holds many secrets, literally the most pure expression of the secret and the occult.
Also known as The Coming, this movie starts in the late 1600s in Salem, as Ann Putnam (Susan Swift) is caught experimenting with black magic. To protect herself, she turns over the names of those who were also involved, sending Reverend Samuel Parris (John Peters) on an orgy of stake burnings to not only destroy all of the witches but to bring back the fear of the Lord in his worshippers. Meanwhile, in 1982, Loreen Graham (also Susan Swift) is possessed by Ann’s spirit.
By 1982, Bert I. Gordon had given up on giant animals after Empire of the Ants and would go on to make movies like Let’s Do It, The Big Bet, Secrets of a Psychopath and Satan’s Princess. That said, along the way, he’d made Picture Mommy Deadand Necromancy, so he was about more than Costco sized vermin.
Ann Putnam is a real person who, at the end of her life, tried to atone for all the people who died at her hands — well, as the result of her identifying them — and said that they were innocent. As for Gordon, making this near the end of a long career, he’s put together a movie that can’t decide if it wants to be supernatural or a dream. He’s still making an occult movie that could play as a made for TV film minus all the profanity and gore the genre had embraced by 1982.
In this film. Putnam can only save a young girl by changing history and bringing someone back in time to fix it. It honestly makes no sense but had enough eerie visuals to keep me watching. There’s a skeleton-handed killer who the movie never really explains and we wonder who the protagonist is, who the villain is and how we’ll get the story all figured out. I wonder if Gordon ever divined it himself.
Directed by Shuji Goto, Kings of the Square Ring comes from a curious time in the time of pro wrestling, martial arts and what would someday be known as mixed martial arts.
This film shows nearly every style that was known in the late 1970s when it was filmed. You get to see kickboxer Benny “The Jet” Urquidez fighting Takeshi Naito, sumo Takamiyama and Muay Thai expert Toshio Fujiwara — the first Japanese person to win a title in that style — against Monsavan Lukchiangmai and Seepree Kiatsompop. Plus, you get boxing, as Paul Fuji fights Abdul Bey.
The majority of the film is devoted to New Japan Pro Wrestling and its star Antonio Inoki. It first shows the fight he had with Muhammad Ali — a match that everyone thought was fake but was more real than either man wanted it to be — as well as a fight with Everett “Monster Man” Eddy, who was in Disco Godfather and did stints for Petey Wheatstraw. There’s even training footage of Willy Williams, who was one of Inoki’s most famous challengers, a man who fought bears and trained in a waterfall like a real person who had come straight out of a Street Fighter video game.
Beyond the intense Karl Gotch-taught training in the New Japan dojo, the film also shows Inoki battle Bob Backlund, Andre the Giant and Tiger Jeet Singh, as well as a match between Willem Ruska and Buffalo Allen, who would later become Bad News Brown in the WWF.
This reminds me of Fist of Fear, Touch of Death, another 1980 documentary on the mysterious world of martial arts. It had to make Inoki happy that his obviously not real world of real martial artists and fighters coming to Japan to challenge him would be treated as fact by an actual movie.
What remains is a true document for fans of this era and the opportunity to see matches and people you may have only seen in magazines, read about or seen clips of.
Jack Sholder has directed some of my favorite movies like Nightmare on Elm Street 2, The Hidden and Alone in the Dark. Working from a script by Steven Dodd, Jonathan David Kahn, Michael Alan Kahn and Don Mancini, he tells the story of Bobby Thornberry (Jon Clair) being sent to live — but mainly be free labor — for his funeral home owning Uncle Ezra (Moses Gunn), who is already abusing his other worker Clyde (Teddy Wilson).
“There you are sportsfiends. You know dead people like me make excellent point guards. When we can’t get off a shot, we simply pass… away that is. Speaking of which, allow me to be your fearleader for tonight’s half-time show. It’s a putrid playlet about my personal favorite sport… being a mortician. I fittingly call it Fitting Punishment.”
Ezra is a horrible person, using water instead of embalming fluid, reusing coffins and stealing gold teeth out of corpses. But the worst thing he does is beat Bobby into a lifetime limp by using a crowbar, as well as selling his Air Jordans to pay for medical bills. Sure, he told people Bobby fell down the steps, but will they believe it when he knocks him down the steps and buries his dead body in a coffin way too small, cutting his legs off to fit his body inside?
Total spoiler warning but I have never seen the reanimated legs of a dead man attack someone while wearing Jordans. What a wild episode.
“Fitting Punishment” is based on the story of the same title from Vault of Horror #16. It was written by Al Feldstein and William Gaines and drawn by Graham Ingels. Like many EC stories, it’s actually a ripoff of another one, in this case H.P. Lovecraft’s “In the Vault.” Unlike the comic book, this episode has an entirely black cast.
Pinis absolute madness and drugs on film. It’s never been released on blu ray. Get ready for the story of a boy, his sister and the anatomy dummy that raises them. You can watch it on YouTube.
Vampirella was created by Forrest J Ackerman and comic book artist Trina Robbins for Warren Publishing, first appearing in her own black and white horror comic magazine, making Vampirella a sister book to Creepy and Eerie. Archie Goodwin was the main writer who took her from a host of horror stories to a character all her own.
In the Warren magazine — the origin has since been changed as the comic book is now published by Dynamite — Vampirella comesfrom the planet Drakulon, a world where blood flows like water for most of the year, until droughts threaten the planet. When an American space ship crashes on her planet, she follows the astronauts home to try and save her people. There, she learns that Dracula is one of the Vampiri, the people of Drakulon, and has been corrupted by demons.
In the movie — which was one of the Roger Corman Presents Showtime films — Vlad Tepish (Roger Daltry) kills all of the rulers of Drakulon and leaves for Earth to take it over. Ella (Talisa Soto) follows him to get revenge for her father.
After being stuck on Mars, she is taken to Earth by a spaceship crew and soon joins Adam Van Helsing (Richard Joseph Paul) and his army of vampire hunters as they head to Vegas to battle Tepish, who is now singer Jamie Blood.
This film was in development for a long time. All the way back in 1976, Hammer was going to make it with wither Caroline Munro and Valerie Leon as Vampirella and Peter Cushing as her friend Pendragon, as well as roles for Orson Welles and Donald Pleasence. Supposedly, Jim Warren wouldn’t give up the merchandising rights.
Riccardo Chiaveri’s interpretation of Munro as Vampi.
Valerie Leon as Vampirella.
Hammer and American-International Pictures almost made a Vampirella movie in 1976 with John Hough directing, Christopher Wicking writing and Barbara Leigh as Vampirella.
There was also a 2019 script reading that had Munro, Judy Matheson and Georgina Dugdale, Munro’s daughter, as Vampirella.
When asked about the film, director Jim Wynorski was not happy with the film that he made, telling Big Gay Horror Fan “My take on Vampirella is that it’s a mess. The last time I watched it was to do the commentary which was awhile ago. It’s a film I cannot watch. Everything went wrong. Everything! I like Talisa Sota as a human being. She’s very pretty and she’s very sexy. But she’s not Vampirella. They forced me to use her. She just didn’t have the body for the costume. Roger Daltry was great. But, yeah, it was in Vegas. There was embezzlement on the set. It was really a nasty, nasty picture to work on. And it came out badly, too. So, I’m just saying that’s one that I look at and say, it could have been and it wasn’t…I should have had Julie Strain. But they didn’t think Julie Strain meant anything. So they put somebody wrong in the role. I should have stopped and said let’s just not do this. But, I was going to lose the rights in 6 months, so I did what I had to do. At least, I got the film made. But I should have said no.”
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