Independent animation mogul Ralph Bakshi worked his way up from cell polisher to animation director at Terrytoons, the B-grade studio behind Mighty Mouse (1960), before striking out on his own with Bakshi Productions in 1968. Against impossible odds, through sheer tenacity and stubbornness, Bakshi built his solo career off of his 1972 feature debut, Fritz the Cat, which was the first officially X-rated cartoon released in US theaters. It was made with producer Steve Krantz an

Long before he had his Hollywood breakthrough with Rush Hour (1998) or his international breakthrough with Rumble in the Bronx (1995), Jackie Chan had his Hong Kong breakthrough with a pair of kung fu comedies in 1978 – Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow and Drunken Master – both made under choreographer-turned-director Yuen Woo-ping. Chan had been groomed as a possible replacement for the late Bruce Lee at Golden Harvest as early as 1976, when he starred in Lo Wei’s New Fist of Fur

In February of 1996, after a decade of trying, Jackie Chan finally had an actual stateside hit, when New Line Cinema released an edited and dubbed version of Stanley Tong’s Rumble in the Bronx. Chan’s earlier, failed attempts to break into the American market – Robert Clouse’s The Big Brawl (aka: Battle Creek Brawl, 1980) and James Glickenhaus’ The Protector (1985) – were tailored to international audiences (The Protector more so than The Big Brawl). Rumble in the Bronx prove

BENEATH THE WAVES ROILS A MURKY STEW OF KILLER ALIENS, MONSTROUS MUTANTS, PSYCHOTIC SOLDIERS, AND EVIL CORPORATIONS!! Welcome to another of Genre Grinder’s patented deep(sea)-dives into a single year in cinema when a specific genre fad peaked. This time, Gabe and Patrick Ripoll are looking at a strange moment in time, the year 1989, when seven different undersea sci-fi/horror/adventures were released*. How did this happen? Your intrepid podcasters will attempt to answer that