Lady Snowblood (1973)

Double edged sword to be a cult movie reference used by Quentin Tarantino; there’ll be fans that will seek out the original texts, though they’ll now always have to be in conversation with them. Particularly a text like Lady Snowblood (1973) that serves as an inspiration for Kill Bill, well, to the degree that an […]

Deadly Outlaw: Rekka (2002)

Yakuza movies are very macho, often mainly about male gangsters either meeting in board rooms or fighting each other in the street. The best Yakuza movies interrogate the codes of honour and loyalty that are merely lip service to the criminal drive to make money and grab power. Takashi Miike has a hundred plus movies […]

Golden Queen’s Commando (1983)

As a Taiwanese action film, Golden Queen’s Commando (1983) aka Seven Black Heroines is an explosion at the cliche factory, producing a very entertaining smash-up of World War II mission movies and spaghetti westerns. This was such a fun time, that I could forgive the pan and scan VHS rip version available on Tubi (I think there’s […]

Dudes (1987)

Memories of the Dudes (1987) VHS cover in the Comedy aisle of a video store, Jon Cryer and Daniel Roebuck with their hands up next to a cactus, promising fish-out-of-water laughs with two punkers in a western, radiating Bill and Ted comparisons, or even Wayne’s World (not knowing as a kid that they were from the same director, Penelope […]

Thrilling Bloody Sword (1981)

Bless Justin Decloux and Gold Ninja Video as I would never have come across the Taiwanese martial arts adventure Thrilling Bloody Sword (1981) without their blu-ray release. The title gave me a different impression of what this film would be, which I bought sight unseen from Gold Ninja Video, as some violent wuxia swordsman action […]