Matador (1986)

Pedro Almodovar’s film, Matador, has a provocative opening salvo, with the character of Diego Montes (Nacho Martinez) sitting alone at home, masturbating in a chair to clips of murder and death scenes from slashers and giallo thrillers (I was delighted to recognise the Jess Franco film, Bloody Moon, in the mix). Shifting from this conflation of auto-erotic […]

The Punisher (1989)

The Producers wish to thank THE NEW SOUTH WALES FILM & TELEVISION OFFICEandTHE KENDO CLUB OF WILLOUGHBY For their assistance and co-operation I love Tubi as a streaming service because it is a great repository for remastered versions of cult classics and older films, no doubt ported over from recent physical media releases from Arrow Video, Shout Factory, Vinegar […]

A Hero Never Dies (1998)

Wine being poured into a glass while blood drops onto a table; the bartender doing the pouring, having been smashed in the face by demanding triad bosses ordering him around. One lingering image from the very stylish A Hero Never Dies (1998), which uses a bottle of wine as a symbolic bond between two criminal […]

Endgame (1983)

Directed by Joe D’mato, Endgame (1983) is another Italian rip-off post-apocalypse movie and much like Lucio Fulci’s Warriors of the Year 2072, it’s about televised death sports, preempting The Running Man movie, though more than likely copying Rollerball. While not as stylish or gory as Fulci’s film, I enjoyed Endgame more. It spends 30 minutes in the world of ‘Endgame’, where three hunters […]

Reflection In A Dead Diamond (2025)

What I appreciate about Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani (Let The Corpses Tan, The Strange Colour Of Your Body’s Tears) as filmmakers is that they are fetishists. Drawing upon memories of genre cinema – a gesture, a moment, a flourish – and not simply re-creating them, but deconstructing and exploding them. With Reflection in a […]