Kill Your Friends (2016)

Director: Owen Harris

Notable Cast: Nicholas Hoult, James Corden, Georgia King, Craig Roberts, Jim Paddock, Joseph Mawle, Ed Skrein, Tom Riley

Sometimes, particularly when you dredge through the undercurrents of modern cinema, one gets the scent of what will become a cult classic in the near future. Dark comedies are always ripe for this path as they alienate the mainstream audience with their subject matter or style and usually only secure funding if they are tight and effective at being a dark comedy. Kill Your Friends is exactly this kind of film. It’s an effectively written and executed dark comedy that lathers on a sort of horror tinged charm to its proceedings while maintaining a quirky vulgar edge that perfectly fits into the ‘cult classic’ category. While it’s not up to par with the likes of American Psycho in setting standards for the style, it ably nestles itself to being a film that can easily be mentioned in the same conversation without skipping a beat – which is a huge compliment unto itself.

The Good, The Bad, The Weird: J-Horror Remakes

The Good, the Bad, the Weird is a new series that explores individuals, genres, and themes within cult cinema with a focus on choosing the best, the worst, and the odd ball within that context. It’s a great place for discussion or analysis on how films fit within a series or filmography along with a way us to further discover our own tastes and preferences. 

For our first The Good, The Bad, The Weird piece, we invited Derrick Carter over from For the Love of Celluloid to celebrate in our J-Horror June month. Together, we came up with our choices for the article based on the slew of J-Horror remakes that graced the cinemas in the 00s. If you get a chance, check out some of Derrick's other work at For the Love of Celluloid (LINK HERE) and let us know what you think are the best, the worst, and the weirdest J-Horror remakes that exist.

Wailing, The (2016)

Director: Na Hong-jin

Notable Cast: Kwak Do-won, Hwang Jung-min, Jun Kunimura, Chun Woo-hee, Jo Han-chul, Jang So-yeon

At this point, I feel like Na Hong-jin is just fuckin’ with us. There is no way that a director takes his first three feature length films and drops three instant classics. Not just cult classics, but true cinematic classics that rise above their assigned genres and edgy non-mainstream elements. His latest film, the horror thriller The Wailing, is just one more film to add to his already impressive cinematic streak of glory. While The Chaser and The Yellow Sea both redefined the thriller into modern effective tales of woe and shock, The Wailing defines what a modern horror film should look like while retaining the same effective style and writing that made his previous two outings so bold and real. This film will knock the wind out of you. It’s a film that defines the best of what horror has to offer by building a real world with characters you care for…and then utterly destroying it all in front of you. The Wailing is the kind of outsider cinema that every film maker should want to make - thoughtful, shocking, thrilling, and ultimately devastating.

Tokyo Mighty Guy (1960)

PART OF THE NIKKATSU DIAMOND GUYS VOL 2 SET

Director: Buichi Saito

Notable Cast: Akira Kobayashi, Ruriko Asaoka, Sanae Nakahara, Arihiro Fujimura, Hiroshi Kondo, Shoichi Ozawa, Toranosuke Ogawa, Shin Morikawa, Hisao Toake

In the first Nikkatsu Diamond Guys box set that Arrow Video released in January, there was a fun little action film called The Rambling Guitarist starring Akira Kobayashi which was directed by Buichi Saito. You can read my review for it HERE. It was the weakest film of the set, but it was still a charming piece of cinema powered by fun performances and a twisty narrative. In the latest Nikkatsu Diamond Guys set from Arrow, they follow this up with another film that pairs Kobayashi and Saito together called Tokyo Mighty Guy. The reason I bring up Guitarist as a lead in for Tokyo Mighty Guy is that both films kicked off franchises and in many ways are inherently similar in tone and style. Tokyo Mighty Guy is fun, first and foremost, but it’s also a film that really gears itself towards being more heartwarming than anything else. It’s hardly a great film as it rarely delves below the surface value of the characters and story on hand, but it’s a film that earns its entertainment value through charming performances and fun comedic set pieces.

Journey to the Shore (2015)

Director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Notable Cast: Tadanobu Asano, Eri Fukatsu, Kaoru Okunuki, Akira Emoto, Yu Aoi, Masao Komatsu

I walked away from this film as irritated as I was pleased and thankful that I had the chance to see this newest outing (save Creepy, which I think hasn't even opened in Japan yet) by longtime favorite of mine, Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Cure, Retribution, Tokyo Sonata). It's a film that is slow, beautiful, heartbreaking, and at the same time it's uninteresting and dull in parts. Oddly, I think it works in the end, though I couldn't help but find myself not caring at moments, but I'll get to that later.

Sadako 3D 2 (2013)

Director: Tsutomu Hanabusa

Notable Cast: Miori Takimoto, Kokoro Hirasawa, Koji Seto, Itsumi Osawa, Takeshi Onishi, Yusuke Yamamoto, Ryosei Tayama, Satomi Ishihara

One of the problems with being a foreign cinema enthusiast is that there are many films that never get a North American release. Truthfully, I feel somewhat blessed that we have gotten as many of the Ringu films as we have, but it’s still a bit irritating when I have to hunt down and import the latest entry into a successful franchise. After waiting a few years for the release of Sadako 3D 2 (or as I will refer to it from this point on, Sadako 2 because the 3D bullshit in the title is dumb), I finally caved in to see what the reboot sequel had to offer. While the original Sadako wasn’t nearly as strong as I would have hoped, this second film – a direct sequel that even brings back a few of the characters from its predecessor – does improve on a few aspects that hindered the first film, but still fails to provide a smooth and un-awkward experience for its viewers. Considering some of the bat-shit insane concepts that previous entries into the Ringu franchise has provided fans, it’s not completely out there but it still has trouble finding a definitive foundation to build its themes on.

Blood Bath (1966)

Directors: Jack Hill, Stephanie Rothman, Rados Novakovic, Michael Roy
Notable Cast: William Campbell, Patrick Magee, Rade Markovic, Miha Baloh, Marissa Mathes, Linda Saunders, Sandra Knight, Carl Schanzer, Biff Elliot, Sid Haig

While the latest Arrow Video release Blood Bath isn’t necessarily for the usual flock of cult cinephiles that the distribution company aims for, it is a set that explores, in a way, one of the more interesting aspects of low budget cinema: reshoots, edits, and the Roger Corman way of low budget film making. Contained in this set are actually four (!) various versions of the “same” Roger Corman produced film in various versions with new scenes, cut scenes, and various states of presentation. In a way, this review may be one of the strangest ones I write for Blood Brothers considering the odd series of events and production pieces that went into the four different versions.  As a word of warning, I’ll do my best to keep this review short with overviews of the different versions and their comparisons instead of a full on exploration of each film on its own. Truthfully, the film isn’t really great enough to go into horrendous detail with a two page review of each cut, but it is one that cinephiles will find fascinating in its own regards no matter how good or bad they think the film is.

The Blood Splatter: 2016 Horror Vol. 1 [#Horror, Nina Forever, Mexico Barbaro]

There is only enough time in the day to write so many reviews, edit them, and format them for the site. Yet we still receive a ton of requests to cover films that may not fit into the schedule. So Blood Brothers has developed a series called The Blood Splatter where our reviewers do three quick takes on various films for our readers that may have not fit into the full review schedule.

One of my focuses as a writer here at Blood Brothers is to dig through a lot of the newer genre material to find the potential cult films from the year. This is actually quite the task and it takes me to some interesting corners of the cult cinema realm. As part of The Blood Splatter series, I will attempt to give some time and thoughts to some of the recent genre films that I haven’t been able to cover in full for the site that have been requested for us to cover in some shape or form. This first article will focus on some of the horror films I have recently watched including #Horror, Nina Forever, and Mexico Barbaro.

Iron Angels (1987)

Director: Teresa Woo

Notable Cast: Moon Lee, Alex Fong, Elaine Lui, Hideki Saijo, Yukari Ôshima, David Chiang, Hwang Jang Lee, Kwan Yeung
AKA: Angel, Fighting Madam, Midnight Angel

At this point in my life as a cinephile, I watch a lot of foreign films. I always have, generally speaking, but now it seems I do so with an almost fever pitch as cult cinema from around the world unfolds before me and I continually discover new films. Unfortunately, it’s hard to find a lot of foreign films that peak my interest at times and, in particular, the action films from Hong Kong in the 80s and 90s can be particularly troubling to find. Sometimes you just have to take what you are given like watching something online since you can’t seem to find it to purchase anymore. In this case, it’s the Hong Kong action spy film Iron Angels – also known as Fighting Madam, also known as Angel, also known as Midnight Angel. It’s known by a lot of titles, really, and the one that I found had the title Angel on its credits despite being labeled as Iron Angels which I’m sure complicates matters for newer releases. That’s beside the point, however, when we have a slick little cult gem of an action film like this one. The story is silly and it has the character depth of a child’s swimming pool, but the action…my, oh my, the action is sweet. For those looking for some 80s style Hong Kong entertainment, you could do a lot worse than Iron Angels which features enough intense action sequences to curb any action craving. You can certainly do better too, but that doesn't stop this one from being entertaining on its own grounds.

Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave, The (1971)

PART OF THE KILLER DAMES BOX SET FROM ARROW VIDEO

Director: Emilio Miraglia

Notable Cast: Anthony Steffan, Marina Malfatti, Rod Murdock, Giacomo Rossi Stuart, Umberto Raho, Roberto Maldera, Joan C. Davies, Erika Blanc

In an effort to set up a context for this review, I’ll admit – I made a mistake. Instead of watching the two films in the Killer Dames double feature box set in chronological order, I started with The Red Queen Kills Seven Times mostly due to its kickass title. I had little knowledge of either film prior to watching them, perhaps knowing that they were cult favorites for some of my giallo loving cohorts, and I was pleasantly surprised with the The Red Queen’s blend of gothic elements and giallo structures. Going into the previous film The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave (which will be referred to as Evelyn from this point on) of similar style from director Miraglia, I had high hopes for another round of gothic giallo fun. However, The Red Queen was most definitely a more refined approach to this style. Evelyn is certainly a ballsy film at times, willing to sacrifice logic or narrative flow for the sake of a few shocks and revelations, but it sacrifices too much and it ends up feeling half cooked despite some strong visual elements and exciting concepts.