Tag: Japanese Cinema
Neu Mirrors is a 2024 Japanese short horror film written and directed by Keishi Kondo. The film is a direct sequel to Keishi’s 2022 feature-length horror drama New Religion (2022), picking up moments after its explosive conclusion. There remain stories yet to be told after New Religion. It begins with Mizuki waking up in a
Village of Doom is a 1983 Japanese period crime thriller, written by Bo Nishimura and Takuya Nishioka, and directed by Noboru Tanaka. Primarily working as a Roman Porno director under Nikkatsu Studios, Tanaka began his directorial career with the softcore drama Beads from a Petal (1972) and continued to make many classic pieces of
Picking up after the vile incident of the fourth Senritsu Kaiki File, Kudo assembles his team once again to film paranormal activities and to… discover isekai? Yes, you heard that right. That’s just one of the surprises Senritsu Kaiki File Kowasugi! File 05: True Story of the Ghost of Yotsuya has in store. Koji Shiraishi,
Regarded by many as Japan’s answer to Brigitte Bardot — both for her glamorousness and vaguely European looks (she wasn’t actually mixed-race) — Mari Atsumi became one of Japanese cinema’s most prominent sex symbols of the early 1970s. As the daughter of Daiei actors Susumu Atsumi and Reiko Wakamiya, she too joined the studio
Leon Tolstoy once wrote, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” While tragic, this notion works wonders in the horror and thriller genre. In fiction, the messier the family, the better the movie. It might not always succeed, but it certainly does in Toshikazu Nagae’s film Saiko! The
Dead Sushi is a 2012 Japanese splatter horror comedy film, written and directed by Noboru Iguchi, with additional writing from Makiko Iguchi and Jun Tsugita. Known for his over-the-top implementation of gore, comedy, and all-round silliness, Iguchi is known as the director behind such classics as The Machine Girl (2008), Robo-Geisha (2009), and Hentai Samurai
Despite other studios seeing success with their own manga adaptations, Toei had always been hesitant when taking such a leap. That all changed in 1972 with Toru Shinohara’s Female Prisoner Scorpion. With its action and grit honed by one of the upcoming masters of action manga, complemented by director Shunya Ito‘s own political and avant-garde
Junk Head is a 2017 dystopian stop-motion animation film, written and directed by Takahide Hori. The film is based on the director’s 2013 first short film Junk Head 1, whose narrative is expanded upon to create a feature-length production. The story unfolds in a post-apocalyptic world where humanity is on the brink of extinction, and
The fact that both Hideo Nakata (Ringu, Dark Water) and Takashi Shimizu (Ju-On, Reincarnation) have been consistently releasing new horror films as of late is astonishingly overlooked. At the same time, one can argue that the not-so-favorable critical reception for these films is the reason why they’re not gaining the traction that their predecessors once
Back in the 1970s, the names of Reiko Ike and Miki Sugimoto were on everyone’s lips. Hailed as the “queens of porno”, they not only became exploitation cinema royalty but burst through into mainstream pop culture. If you bought any random issue of Heibon Punch, Weekly Playboy, or one of the countless other men’s magazines