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

SPLIT PERSONALITIES! BURIED TRAUMA! DEMANDING CAREERS! SHITTY BOYFRIENDS! COLD-BLOODED MURDER! IT’S HARD OUT HERE FOR A WOMAN!! We’ve already talked about the giallo movies released during the genre’s peak year of 1971 with Patrick and covered several of the American films found in the pages of Kier-La Janisse’s House of Psychotic Women with Bill, so why not join Gabe and first-time guest host Sharon Gissy for a look at the female-centric gialli  also found in Janisse’s autob

During the 1990s, a string of international hits brought the Hong Kong New Wave to the attention of Hollywood and several top tier filmmakers, including Jackie Chan, John Woo, Yuen Woo-ping, Ronny Yu, Ringo Lam, and Tsui Hark, were given deals making English-language films. Like previous attempts to import Hong Kong style action to America, most of these films – especially the ones not involving Chan, Woo, or Yuen – were modestly budgeted and either went straight-to-video or

Eloy de la Iglesia was a vital Spanish filmmaker in the waning days of General Franco’s regime. He was especially renowned for his groundbreaking quinqui (delinquent crime) features, queer-themed dramas, and erotic thrillers, all of which pushed the boundaries of the country’s fascist censorship standards. He also made a number of films in the giallo tradition, including straight-forward, Hitchcockian productions, like The Glass Ceiling (Spanish: El techo de cristal, 1971) an

1998. Bill Clinton's affair was uncovered, leading to his impeachment -- bad behavior we now know was only the tip of the iceberg. Andrew Wakefield published a bullshit study that lead to the current, deadly anti-vax movement. Google was founded, arguably launching our current tech oligarchy. Lastly (but perhaps most importantly) New Line Cinema's expensive TV-to-movie adaptation Lost in Space cratered at the box office, grossing only $136.1 million against an $80 million bud

It's the stuff of contemporary Hollywood legend. After making ends meet as a stand-up comedian and scoring parts here and there (including the last Dirty Harry movie, The Dead Pool, and Earth Girls Are Easy), Jim Carrey first landed on the public's radar as the token white guy on the Wayans Brothers comedy show "In Living Color." Although the show turned Carrey into a rising star, Hollywood moves slow, but in Carrey's case, the wait would pay off when not one, not two, but th

For the most part, the giallo and poliziottescho booms were populist fads, cranked out quickly for low budgets and released in other countries as straight exploitation market fodder. But there were exceptions – films with arthouse aspirations that played with genre, ignored clichés, and gained international prestige. The best examples (as far as I’m concerned) would be Elio Petri’s savvy satirical thriller Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (Italian: Indagine su un ci

During the ancient early days of the public internet, I once stumbled across a website called Losman’s Lair of Horror (you can still visit it, thanks to the Wayback Machine). The Lair was devoted to cataloging and reviewing films that Losman considered the most disturbing movies of all time. As a young horror fan with a new rental subscription card, I was always looking for under-the-radar titles to add to my watchlist. Alongside notoriously cruel and disgusting films, like P