The Whip And The Body (1963)

When a film communicates two emotions happening across a character’s face, all in the one shot, the magic trick of that. In the Mario Bava directed film, The Whip and The Body (1963), there’s a tremendous close-up of the character of Nevenka (Dahlia Lavi), walking down a darkened castle hallway, approaching a door where she […]

The 8 Diagram Pole Fighter (1984)

While I have not seen every Shaw Brothers movie, The 8 Diagram Pole Fighter (1984) might be my favourite movie of the studio, so far. Directed by the legendary choreographer Lau Kar-leung who made the 36th Chamber Of Shaolin, and plenty of other Shaw Brothers classics currently available to stream on Mubi. Set in feudal […]

Lone Wolf And Cub: Sword Of Vengeance (1972)

It’s hard not to be nostalgic for things like Saturday Cult Movie nights on SBS with Des Magnan with the type of movies I’d get exposed to on free to air TV growing up as a teenager. The Lone Wolf And Cub series tended to get played a lot, and I think I’ve only seen […]

The Curse Of Frankenstein (1957)

When I was a kid, I loved watching The World Of Hammer on SBS, the doco series that was basically a greatest hits package of Hammer Horror narrated by Oliver Reed. Seeing that Hammer Studios made their own version of Frankenstein, my kid brain had a weird brand loyalty to the Boris Karloff Frankenstein, like, […]

Wuthering Heights (1939)

Wuthering Heights (1939) is another classic film on the list of movies from Danny Peary’s Cult Movies 2 book that I had not seen before. I read Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights in high school and always had a fondness for it, maybe it was the gothic vibes and the element of revenge, more than likely […]