Author: Rob Gowers
Whilst Wong is a very common name in Singapore and China, Cleopatra certainly isn’t! The name actually reveals the main inspiration for this film: the blaxploitation heroine – CIA agent Cleopatra Jones. In a glut of murky blaxploitation films, where, despite their roles as the heroines, female characters were often victimised and objectified, Cleopatra Jones
Whilst manga in Japan was certainly nothing new by the 1950s, the efforts of artists such as Osamu Tezuka led to the medium becoming more popular than ever, especially with children. With the extreme popularity of this childrens’ manga only ever growing, the term “manga” itself was quickly becoming synonymous purely with childrens’ manga. Artists
First released in 1984, Cream Lemon was an anthology series of standalone adult shorts which revolutionised the OVA (original video animation) market. Despite not being the first adult anime made, it was the first to boast truly high production values not usually afforded to pornography. By the early 1990s tastes in anime had significantly changed;
Strike of the Tortured Angels is a fairly obscure, though not totally unknown film; appearing in the 1980s as part of a wave of Asian films brought over to the west to satisfy the lucrative direct-to-video market of martial arts and exploitation films. However, until recently the actual origins had effectively been lost to time.
The term pinky violence is a retroactive term used to collectively refer to Toei’s various films of the early 70’s focused on sukebans, girl gangs and bad girls in general. Initially sparked as a reaction to the girl gang films of their rivals Nikkatsu and Daiei, pinky violence films soon took on a life of
After contributing to periodical manga magazines such as Manga OK from the mid-60s, the ever-ambitious Taro Bonten would decide to create his own bespoke gekiga magazine in 1969 named Black Ace. However, this wouldn’t be just any normal magazine and would seek to recreate the mystery genre started by kasutori magazines in the late 1940s.
Noboru Yoshimi was a prolific horror manga author who enjoyed great success with over 300 published stories to his name, mainly aimed at a younger audience. There is however one tale of perverted gender-bending horror that risks being relegated into the realms of lost media. To this day the only place to read Indecent Wriggling
Following WWII, there would be a shortage of decent alcohol and before long bootleg, shochu liquor, referred to as kasutori (effectively Japanese moonshine) began to circulate. Being made from whatever ingredients people could scrape together, sometimes even toxic chemicals, kasutori alcohol soon developed an extremely poor reputation in society. It was this term that would
To call “Dirty Harry” ground-breaking would be an understatement. In 1972, it completely revolutionised urban crime dramas with its gritty – almost giallo – cinematography, focus on shocking crime and of course Clint Eastwood’s now legendary protagonist. The rulebooks were torn up and decency disregarded as the film focused on the villain Scorpio committing seemingly
After Purima Kikaku’s success with their three “Document Porno: Sukeban” films they would move onto a new format for their next attempt at the sukeban genre – the “semi-document”. Whereas the document porno films would portray the action as a mockumentary accompanied by a narrator to sell the illusion of reality; “Semi-Document: Sukeban Bodyguard” would