During the 1980s, Hong Kong studios began the search for a female equivalent to rising cinema idols, like Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung, in keeping with the tradition of King Hu’s Come Drink with Me (1966), Huang Feng’s Hapkido (aka: Lady Kung Fu, 1972), and Lau Kar-leung’s My Young Auntie (1981). This led to a series of full-throttle action classics affectionately known as Girls with Guns movies. The Girls with Guns genre really kicked off with the In the Line of Duty films, a

Surely, on the list of underrated cult filmmakers, Robert Clouse ranks highly. His work with Bruce Lee alone – including directing Lee’s Hollywood debut, Enter the Dragon (1973), and completing Game of Death (1978) after Lee’s death – is enough to get him into the history books, but he also made Jim Kelly’s first star vehicle, Black Belt Jones (1974), attempted to introduce Jackie Chan and Cynthia Rothrock to American audiences via The Big Brawl (1980) and China O’Brien (1990

Perry Henzell’s The Harder They Come (1972) is arguably the most famous, influential, and consequential motion picture to ever come out of Jamaica. It’s certainly the most famous, influential, and consequential motion picture about reggae and the criminal connections to the local music scene during the 1970s. Despite Henzell’s film’s impact on the midnight movie circuit and the fact that it helped introduce reggae and ska to North America and Europe, the Jamaican film industr

Katô’s first yakuza film, Blood of Revenge (Japanese: Meiji kyokyakuden - sandaime shumei, 1965), takes place at the turn of the previous century, well before the yakuza’s post-WWII peak, offering a contrast to the rough-and-tumble, modern-set Japanese gangster films Kinji Fukasaku made during the 1970s. The result is a jidaigeki style gangster tale with an industrial revolution twist. It’s not an entirely unique fusion of narrative conventions, as there are plenty of other J