All genre trends have their peak year when the most applicable films are released in theaters and few regions embraced genre trends like the Italians did between the 1950s and 1980s. For example, the pepla peaked around 1964, the spaghetti westerns around 1968, the poliziotteschi around 1980 (I haven’t done the actual math on that one), and the post-apocalyptic movies around 1983. Between January and December of 1971, at least 42 gialli and giallo-adjacent thrillers were rele

Richard Moore’s Circle of Iron (aka: The Silent Flute, 1978) is an interesting case of a genre-spanning film, tailor-made for midnight movie audiences that fails to deliver on almost every one of its conceptual promises, yet still manages to secure a loyal cult following. Initially a collaboration between superstar martial artist Bruce Lee and his friends/students/collaborators, Oscar-winning actor James Coburn and Oscar-winning screenwriter Sterling Silliphant, Circle of Iro

During his peak 1988 to 1994 box office run, between playing tournament fighters and cyborgs, Jean-Claude Van Damme starred in a martial arts murder mystery/prison movie called Death Warrant (1990). Directed by indie sci-fi/horror filmmaker Deran Sarafian, it was the first produced screenplay from future blockbuster superhero screenwriter David S. Goyer. Death Warrant fits the Van Damme formula, but shifts genre just enough to keep it fresh.

WHAT’S THE ONLY THING SCARIER THAN GOING TO SCHOOL? LIVING AT SCHOOL! Whether they’re haunted by ghosts, run by toxic malcontents, or invaded by Satanists, boarding schools have been a horror, thriller, and dark melodrama fixture for decades. Join Gabe and returning guest Chloe Waryan as they enroll in a variety of spooky academic institutions, including Carlos Enrique Taboada’s Even the Wind is Afraid (Spanish: Hasta el viento tiene miedo, 1967/8), Anthony Page’s Absolution

The late Charlton Heston was a Hollywood stalwart and classic overactor who survived the fall of the studio system, thrived in the blockbusters era, and became the face of the NRA as public opinion began to turn on the association. His acting career was broad and eclectic, but, to film fans raised on television and home video, he’s mostly remembered for Biblical/historic epics, war films, and a trilogy of dystopic sci-fi films that he appeared in during the ‘60s and early ‘70

Welcome back to Wizard Jail – a limited run series from Director’s Club, Tracks of the Damned, and 96 Greers podcast co-host Patrick Ripoll and Genre Grinder creator Gabe Powers where they talk about, what else, but the 1987 syndicated cartoon series Visionaries: Knights of the Magical Light. This is it, folks, the end of the road. We’re picking up the pieces and moving on from Visionaries, but not before we talk about the original Marvel comic series (spoiler, it was cancele

No other director had a bigger impact on Hong Kong action cinema than Chang Cheh, who directed and/or wrote around 100 movies across six decades. His films were steeped in a formula now known as ‘heroic bloodshed,’ which emphasized brotherhood, redemption, and violent sacrifice, but his style evolved with the times and helped usher in the Hong Kong New Wave styles that, in turn, took Hollywood by storm in the mid-to-late ‘90s. While he was not the first filmmaker of his kind

Belgian martial artist and actor Jean-Claude Van Damme’s meteoric career hit its stride with Newt Arnold’s Bloodsport in 1988 and peaked around Roland Emmerich’s Universal Soldier and John Woo’s Hard Target (1992 and ‘93, respectively). Between those, there was a quick series of films released that more or less used that first hit as a template. Everyone outside of the biggest Van Damme fans would be forgiven for confusing these titles, especially Bloodsport, David Worth’s Ki

In 1989, underground filmmaker Shinya Tsukamoto wrote, directed, produced, edited, and co-starred in Tetsuo: The Iron Man. It became astoundingly influential in the cult, cyberpunk, and pop art scenes of the era, leading to surprising mainstream penetration in the form of movies (Darren Aronofsky’s Pi [1998], for example, would not exist without Tetsuo’s success), music videos (Portishead’s “Machine Gun”), and advertising (Tsukamoto teamed with Trent Reznor for an MTV promo t

It’s always exciting when I get a review copy of a film I almost covered for a podcast. It’s extra exciting when I get a review copy of a film I almost covered on multiple episodes of the podcast. Donald Farmer’s Scream Dream (1989) was initially going to be included on the four-part podcast Patrick Ripoll and I recorded about Shot-on-Video (SOV) Horror Movies (listen to part one here). Then it was going to be included with our two-part SOV Addendum podcast (listen to part on