The Yurei
V-cinema icon Hitoshi Ozawa, who has been a regular fixture in the films of Takashi Miike, plays grizzled detective Torada who has just been released from prison in order to head an investigation into a corrupt businessman turned politician, Gojo. With his small team, Torada cracks down on Gojo and the Korean gang executing the
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
From time to time, you’ll see an article chronicling the various examples of times Western monsters crossed the Pacific and got starring roles in Asian cinema, such as Frankenstein Conquers the World, Vampire Effect, Bio Zombie, Werewolf Boy, and the like. It would then reason that this would be a two-way street, so surely there
While the 1980s were a fairly lacklustre era for Japanese genre cinema on the major studio front, it was quite an exciting time on the independent scene. A whole new generation of filmmakers — emboldened by the availability of 16mm cameras (the novel home video distribution format) and a robust economy — burst onto the
Guzoo: The Thing Forsaken by God – Part 1 is a 1986 Japanese monster horror film written and directed by Kazuo Komizu with additional writing from Hitoshi Matsuyama and Junzô Takagi. Kazuo is most notable for directing the gore films Entrails of a Virgin (1986), Entrails of a Beautiful Woman (1986), and Rusted Body: Guts
It is an undeniable fact that some horror fans also can be huge softies. We enjoy our healthy dose of gore, scares, and violence, but we are not dead inside. No matter how horrific or distorted, we can always find beauty even in the most awful creature if the situation calls for it. This is
Ceroboh (aka The Screaming Sky) is a 2022 Malaysian sci-fi thriller, directed by Feisal Azizuddin. Mostly known for directing shorts, Feisal made his move into feature-length directing the drama thriller Kabus as well as Ceroboh in the same year. Written by Chong Keng Fatt, the script was the winning entry out of hundreds entered in
Hasshaku-sama, translated to ‘Miss Eight-Feet-Tall’, is a Japanese urban legend – who is possibly classified as a modern Yokai interpretation of ‘ Taka-onna’– originating on the Japanese message board 2Chan in 2002. The figure has strong parallels to ‘Slender Man ‘ in the West (invented itself in 2009 via Something Awful) – a sign her
New Religion is a 2022 Japanese surrealist horror, written and directed by Keishi Kondo in his feature-length debut. Kenshi is also known as the writer/director/cinematographer behind the drama short See You Again (2020). “After her daughter’s death, divorced Miyabi works as a call-girl. One day, she meets a strange customer who wants to photograph her
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