AROUSED Production: USA, 1966 Director: Anton Holden Category: Serial Murder/Sex-Psycho From the same NY grindhouse scene as the films of Michael and Roberta Findlay, Holden’s “roughie/ghoulie” is one of the best of the period, featuring a psychopathic killer with a grudge against hookers (his mother was a prostitute who neglected Continue Reading
SZEGÉNYLEGÉNYEK
SZEGÉNYLEGÉNYEK (“Outlaws”) Production: Hungary, 1965 Director: Miklós Jancsó US release title: The Round-Up Category: War Atrocity In the desolate aftermath of Kossuth’s 1848 rebellion against the oppressive Hapsburg Austrian Empire, the last remaining nationalists are imprisoned and subjected to physical and psychological torture. Framed in stark black-and-white images of devastation, Continue Reading
THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM
THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM Production: USA, 1955 Director: Otto Preminger Category: Drug Addiction From the drug novel by Nelson Algren, the first big-budget Hollywood treatment of heroin addiction came in the wake of numerous cheap exploitation movies on a similar subject. As such, the film actually violated Industry Continue Reading
ARCANA
ARCANA Production: Italy, 1972 Director: Giulio Questi Category: Occult The third, and least known, of the unconnected triptych of enigmatic features made by Questi at the end of the 1960s/early 70s. Whereas Se Sei Vivo Spara was a horror-tinged homo-erotic western and La Morte Ha Fatto L’Uovo a perverse, psychedelic Continue Reading
NAWA TO HADA
NAWA TO HADA (“Rope And Skin”) Production: Japan, 1979 Director: Nishimura Shogoro Category: Sex/Sadism Notable as the last film starring Naomi Tani, who plays Cherry Blossom Okoma, a female gambler also giving her farewell performance – or so she thinks. It all goes wrong when she catches a local yakuza boss Continue Reading
MALICE@DOLL
MALICE@DOLL Production: Japan, 1999 Director: Motonaga Keitaro Category: Anime/CyberSex Comprising three OAV episodes – Hard Flesh, Oral Infection, and Perverted Organism – Malice@Doll is regarded as the first 3D-CGI anime created in Japan. Written by Chiaki Konaka, the film is set in a future where mankind has vanished, leaving behind Continue Reading
ROADKILL: THE LAST DAYS OF JOHN MARTIN
ROADKILL: THE LAST DAYS OF JOHN MARTIN Production: USA, 1989 Director: Jim Van Bebber Category: Psycho-Killer Vicious short on an Ed Gein theme, with a cannibal psycho who makes nude girls hop around in a cage over the gas-rings while he trucidates their boyfriends. Shot with Van Bebber’s customary verve, Continue Reading
L’ARBRE DE GUERNICA
L’ARBRE DE GUERNICA (“The Guernica Tree”) Production: France/Italy, 1975 Director: Fernando Arrabal Category: Counter-Culture Arrabal’s bizarre and horrific retelling of the bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War, with some images of beautiful blasphemy that include blowing up and pissing on Christ, and a dwarf smearing semen on the lips Continue Reading
PU PU
PU PUProduction: Japan, 1960 Director: Jonouchi Motoharu Category: ExperimentalOne of the most renowned Japanese experimental films of the early 60s, comprising surrealistic sequences of a profane burial rite intercut with found images. Jonouchi was one of the founders of the VAN Institute for Cinematic Science, along with the likes of Continue Reading
HEI TAI YANG 731
HEI TAI YANG 731(“731: Total Eclipse Of The Sun”)Production: Hong Kong, 1988English title: Men Behind The SunDirector: T.F. Mou Tun-FeiCategory: War Atrocity/Human ExperimentsA faked, but hideously realistic documentary account of true war and experimental medical atrocities perpetrated by the Japanese kempeitai in Manchuria during WW2, at the covert bacteriological mass-extermination Continue Reading