There are actors that just become synonymous with certain roles. For instance, if I were to mention Sherlock Holmes then many would think of Benedict Cumberbatch, whilst others would think of Basil Rathbone, and for a character that has appeared in over 250 screen adaptations, that isn’t bad going. The […]
Ben Jones
Horror, Cult, Grindhouse & Psychotronic B-Movies. Celebrating the Trashy side of Cinema. Crowned “Trash King” by podhard & Official NWPPVIP of
The New World Pod
Rich and Famous/Tragic Hero (1987) Heroic Bloodshed’s Strength in Depth (Review)
Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan had become the faces of Hong Kong cinema, delivering a brand of action cinema that was both thrilling as it was technical in its execution, we’d never seen anything quite like it here in the West. And whilst it may have been Cheng Chang-Ho’s 1972 […]
Golgo 13 (1973) Ken Takakura at his Effortless Best (Review)
When Takao Saito’s manga creation of the worlds deadliest assassin, Golgo 13, was first optioned by Toei Studios he had but two caveats. The first was that the entire film should be shot on location, and the second was that the actor that the character was based upon should be […]
The Katsuhito Ishii Collection (1995-2022) (Review)
Anyone with an interest in Japanese culture in the mid to late Noughties had heard the stories of these mad films coming out of Japan. There was the one with the weird babies and the other that had a huge head in the garden. It would transpire that the first […]
Revenge (1964) A True Masterpiece of Japanese Cinema (Review)
How does one win when the chips are stacked so very high against you? In a society where social standing and face mean everything, the slightest disagreement or misunderstanding can escalate to unfathomable levels of violence, heaping consequence upon consequence. When does it end? And just how far does it […]
The Game Trilogy (1978/9) Classic Japanese Carnage with a Huge Slice of Cool (Review)
Standing at 6 feet tall and having an effortlessly cool demeanour, Yusaku Matsuda stood head and shoulders above his contemporaries in every sense of the term. His baby face masked by the always present sunglasses and a slender physique gave manga and anime artists their template for the next two […]
Burning Paradise (1994) Classic Wire-Fu that suffers due to the legendary status of its peers (Review)
By the time 1994 came around, Hong Kong cinema had mastered the art of Wire Fu. Ching Siu Tung changed how this genre of wuxia had been portrayed on film with the classic A Chinese Ghost Story (ably assisted by producer Tsui Hark), Jet Li with his stints as both […]
Yakuza Graveyard (1976) A Chaotically Rewarding Yakuza Classic That Demands All of Your Attention (Review)
Toei had already garnered a reputation for being the studio that made Yakuza movies. Between their ninkyo-eiga (“chivalry”) pictures of the 1960s to the harder-hitting jitsuroku-eiga (“actual record films”) popularised by the likes of Director Kinji Fukasaku and writer Kazuo Kasahara, Toei Company had a winning formula that brought in […]
Slasher: Ripper (Complete: Season 5)(Review)
This fifth instalment of (now) AMC/Shudder’s horror anthology, Slasher, comes to a close, and with all the lavish splendour that this season has presented, can it maintain it’s early promise and deliver a conclusion that will set it as the best entry in the franchise to date? More on that […]
The Bullet Train (1975)A Measured Disaster Movie that Captured the Mood of the 70s (Review)
The 1970s were such a diverse and varied decade for cinema. It would give rise to the summer blockbuster (Star Wars & Jaws), get wracked with paranoia in its conspiracy thrillers (The Parallax View & The Conversation) and no longer see the world through the rose-tinted glasses that had filled […]