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 […]
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
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 […]
The Street Fighter Trilogy (1974) Kicks, Quips and Boatload of Cool (Review)
On July 20th 1973 the world lost one of the most iconic action stars to have ever been. A star that shone so bright that it was bound to burn out rather than fade away. He would be the standard by which the action genre would be judged and would […]
Slasher: Ripper (Episode 1 & 2: Season 5)(Review)
Episode 1 – The Slaughterhouse & Episode 2 – The Painful Truth Comparisons to Fox’s American Horror Story are inevitable for Shudder/AMC’s Horror seasonal anthology series, Slasher. Each season presenting a new story and setting, and just like it’s contemporary, it brings with it a multitude of returning actors in different […]
Punk Samurai (2018) Samurai Comedy Anarchy that we’ve never seen the likes of before (Review)
Punk Samurai, also known as Punk Samurai Slash Down (a title still retained on the main menu screen of this Blu-Ray release), is a title that evokes mental images of Jidaigeki or Chanbara epics, but with a modern twist, and in many ways that is exactly what it is… and […]
Electric Dragon 80000v (2001) A ‘Saturday Morning Avant-garde, Punk Rock Fever Dream’ Cartoon (Review)
There was a moment in the early 2000s when, here in the West, Tadanobu Asano was the new Japanese king of cool. From his portrayal of the crazed Ichi in Takashi Miike’s Ichi The Killer, or the prime antagonist Hattori Genosuke in Takeshi Kitano’s reimagining of the classic tale of […]