Deep Red (1975)

Director: Dario Argento

Notable Cast: David Hemmings, Daria Nocolodi, Maha Meril, Clara Calamai, Gabriele Lavia, Eros Pagni, Giuliana Calandra, Piero Mazzinghi, Glauco Mauri

A couple months ago, it was brought to our attention that despite our continued efforts to cover cult cinema – and my own personal quest to dig into more giallo this year,  that we have not given Dario Argento nearly enough love on this site. Low and behold, this sentiment is true and looking at the various coverage we have developed we have not given Mr. Argento nearly enough coverage. For cult cinephiles, this is probably not an issue because his work is widely known and his innovations as a director in the 70s and 80s have made him one of the cornerstones of genre film making. However, upon request, let’s take a look back at some of his films. For starters, I decided it was high time to go back and revisit one of my favorite Argento films, Deep Red. While Argento would be known for a lot of various things throughout his career, Deep Red is perhaps one of his strongest and most cohesive pictures. At its foundations, Deep Red works as a murder mystery, but it’s the director’s style and often nightmarish moments that define the film and give it a narrative life worthy of much of the praise it has received decades down the road. Deep Red is a tight and effective film that balances a lot of smaller pieces into a much bigger film whose whole is greater than its parts.

Shin Godzilla (2016)

Directors: Hideaki Anno, Shinji Higuchi

Notable Cast: Hiroki Hasegawa, Yutaka Takenouchi, Satomi Ishihara

AKA: Shin Gojira, Godzilla: Resurgence 

After Godzilla got the American reboot a couple of years ago, it stirred notions in the water that Toho was interested in trying to bring the Big G back for their own franchise. This, of course, causes both excitement and panic in the fan base and there seemed to be as much hesitation as their was blind faith in the project from fans. While the newest American film has garnered its own share of mixed feelings (you can read my positive position on the film HERE) there were enough rumors and speculation about what the film would be that it was easy to lose sight that we were getting a new goddamn Toho Godzilla film. Even better? After its release in Japan to some solid critical acclaim and box office numbers, it was purchased by Funimation for distribution in the US and it would even get a limited theatrical run. Not only were we getting a new Godzilla film, but it was getting a release in the United States. After seeing the aptly titled Shin Godzilla (bless Funimation for going with this title instead of Godzilla: Resurgence which wouldn’t make sense at all in the film), it’s easy to see why it’s making such a huge mark in Japan. This is not only a fantastically executed rebirth for the character and franchise, it’s one that knows its roots and homages the original in so many effective ways while maintaining its own style and approach. Shin Godzilla is the best of both worlds and it comes as a spectacular surprise.

Vamp (1986)

Director: Richard Wenk

Notable Cast: Chris Makepeace, Robert Rusler, Grace Jones, Dedee Pfeiffer, Gedde Watanabe

Throughout the various groups and circles of cult cinema fans that I find myself included in, it was very rare that I would hear anything about Vamp. If I did, it was usually in a context of comparing it to Fright Night, another 80s vampire comedy that has earned a significant cult status as time as passed. Nonetheless I was excited when my copy of Vamp arrived, a newly released Blu Ray version via the Criterion of cult cinema Arrow Video, and I was eager to sink my own fangs into this highly overlooked piece of comedic vampire film. While it is easy to see why Vamp does come in as a similar and slightly inferior film to Fright Night as so many acquaintances had stated, Vamp is also a film that deserves a much larger fan base than the one it has as it blends the horror, humor, camp, and quirks in a lot of ambitious and often surprising ways. How wrong can one go with a film about college guys who wander into a strip club full of vampires? Certainly not wrong enough to be as shockingly overlooked as Vamp seems to be.

Lisa and the Devil (1973)

Director: Mario Bava

Notable Cast: Elke Sommer, Telly Savalas, Sylva Koscina, Alessio Orano, Gabriele Tinti, Kathy Leone, Espartaco Santoni, Alida Valli

Throughout his career, Mario Bava tried his best to be diverse with his films even if he always brought his own unique flare to each one of them. It didn’t always work, but his attempts at branching out are appreciated from a fan’s perspective as it gives us some distinctive things to look at in his filmography. Of the more ‘classic’ horror films that he directed, Lisa and the Devil comes up as one of the hit or miss entries from fans depending on who you ask about it. Before seeing the film, I received a variety of opinions on the various versions (which will be touched on briefly below) and it would seem that it could be viewed anywhere between his best and his worst, given the various fan approaches to it. When the credits finally rolled on Lisa and the Devil though, I had to admit that I found it to be one of his best – an often too overlooked and misunderstood artistic and surrealistic horror film filled to the brim with approaches that leave it open to interpretation. It’s understandable why the film would generate such diverse reactions though, but for my money it’s a piece of Bava cinema that is just boiling with flashes of brilliance and an artistic approach that allows it to be seen in so many different ways.

Pink (2016)

Director: Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury
Notable Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Taapsee Pannu, Kirti Kulhari, Andrea Tariang, Angad Bedi

I went in to Pink with reserved expectations. I knew it was a film that would be serious and I had heard very high praise for Amitabh's performance as the lawyer working with the three young women involved in a violent incident. That being said, Indian cinema is something I am still new to and I think the number of good and great films that aren't goofy Bollywood affair coming from the region are new to the movie goers there. That aside, Pink is one powerful film and will without a doubt make it into my Top 10 of the Year list for 2016!

Vampyres (2016)

Director: Victor Matellano

Notable Cast: Veronica Polo, Anthony Rotsa, Victory Vidal, Fele Martinez, Marta Flich, Almudena Leon, Caroline Munro

As I’ve said before in various reviews, I’m not inherently against remakes. Really, I’m not. In the case of many low budget or older films, there are ways to modernize or change a film without deterring from its core intentions and that breeds some creative material in many ways. Vampyres, a modern day Spanish remake of the 1974 exploitation cult film, had a lot of potential to raise the bar on the original and it was obvious that the director and producers had a lot of respect for the films of exploitation past – when one looks at all of the cameos from cult character actors that appear in this film. So it’s an unfortunate turn of events when this updated sensual vampire flick rarely embraces its own artistic hints and simply goes for the simple solution. For those looking for a film with gore and skin, it will certainly fit the minimum requirements of entertainment as a modern day exploitation film. For those hoping for a little bit more, i.e. me, Vampyres is a lackluster horror film with little outside of the basics to appease a growing appetite for better films in the exploitation arena.

Operation Mekong (2016)

Director: Dante Lam

Notable Cast: Zhang Hanyu, Eddie Peng, Carl Ng, Ken Lo, Pawarith Monkolpisit, Jonathan Wu

Many of the early trailers for Operation Mekong made the film look something like a military action thriller, powered by a dramatic ‘based on true events’ plot, and packed with big name stars throwing their best performances to earn awards. In many ways, yes, this is the film you are going to see with Operation Mekong. It’s certainly all of those things to an extent. However, that’s not all it is either. There was a certain expectation that went with the tone of the trailers that seemed to mix Platoon with a more modern day Lone Survivor spin and Operation Mekong is a bit more than that…and a bit less. Dante Lam’s latest action extravaganza is more John Woo and less Oliver Stone in its approach to the story, blending in high octane block buster action sequences with military dramatic touches. So it is less, in the idea of an impactful and emotional punch categories, but it is certainly more in the insane cheesy action categories. Operation Mekong ultimately comes off as a slightly mixed effort in its writing and characters, but it makes up for a lot of its larger flaws by being skull shattering action packed and tense. When it’s boiled down, this is really the film I should have expected and I still enjoyed the hell out of it, even if it doesn’t quite match the dramatic heights that Dante Lam has reached in previous films.

Slugs (1988)

Director: J.P. Simon
Notable Cast: Michael Garfield, Kim Terry, Phillip MacHale, Alicia Moro, Santiago Alvarez, Concha Cuetos

Spanish director J.P. Simon may not be known for making great movies, but he sure is known for making entertaining ones. This is the reason I was rather excited to dive into Slugs, Simon’s little creature feature that features more slime, gore, and explosions than one would ever expect a killer insect movie to ever have. Now I’m not saying that Slugs is a film that defies it genre and rises above it, rather I’m saying that it’s a film that certainly embraces its tongue-in-cheek aspects and runs with them instead of battling them. It’s hardly a great film in any sense, for a variety of reasons, but there is definitely a reason why Arrow Video deemed it worthy of a restoration and packed Blu Ray release. That’s because it is a film worthy of the cult classic tag that packs a punch in with its shiny, slimy titular stars. This is a film that ultimately entertains before anything else and for that it’s deserving of its status.

Hills Have Eyes, The (1977)

Director: Wes Craven
Notable Cast: Martin Speer, Robert Houston, Susan Lanier, Russ Grieve, Virginia Vincent, Dee Wallace, John Steadman, James Whitworth, Michael Berryman, Lance Gordon, Janus Blythe, Cordy Clark, Arthur King

Wes Craven’s quality of film might have taken a turn for the worse in the latter part of his career, but it’s easy to see why the man was an iconic master of horror film making through most of it. His earliest films, low budget horror flicks like this seminal classic The Hills Have Eyes, show a certain spark for abrasive creativity and insightful use of their low budgets. While the film is not perfect, at least not to the extent that some horror fans love to rave about it in the grander scheme of things, The Hills Have Eyes is definitely the cult horror classic it deserves to be too. It uses its obstacles to give itself a raw and desperate tone that works wonders to cover its occasionally flawed performances or narrative speed bumps. To top it off, this latest Blu Ray release of the film from Arrow Video is the home release that fans have been dying to get their hands on with a stellar new restoration and a slew of special features worthy of the purchase. Fans of the film or Wes Craven are definitely going to want to nab this one as both the film and release are worthy of note. 

Sleepy Eyes of Death 2: Sword of Adventure (1964)

Director: Kenji Misumi

Notable Cast: Raizo Ichikawa

The first Sleepy Eyes of Death film was a decent sword and slash affair that found it a bit difficult to balance its thematic narrative with its entertaining aspects. It’s still a fun film, but hardly the iconic classic that I would have assumed it would be to spawn such a loved cult franchise. This is one of the reasons that it took me so long before getting around to the second film in the series, under the title Sleepy Eyes of Death 2: Sword of Adventure. However, the arrival of the massively underrated director Kenji Misumi to the series fold makes a world of difference for the tone and execution for this film. Instead of gimmicky villains and an almost tongue in cheek nihilistic approach to its characters, Sword of Adventure takes a politically charged approach and it creates a much smarter and streamlined affair that finds the balance between entertainment and depth of writing. It’s such a huge step up in quality that I’m now excited to see what the rest of this series has to offer.