No other director has 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 k

Lam Nai-Choi, sometimes credited as Simon Lam, began his career as a cinematographer at Shaw Bros. before relocating to rival studio Golden Harvest, where he became a director and made some of the most absurd and imaginative films of the ‘80s and early ‘90s. He only made 13 features in total, but is well-remembered for a trio of unhinged Cat. III masterpieces – the demented Indiana Jones meets Mr. Vampire meets Evil Dead extravaganza, The Seventh Curse (1986), the delirious p

A couple of years before Shaw Bros. released their version of a kaiju movie with Ho Meng-hua’s King Kong rip-off, The Mighty Peking Man (1977), the studio attempted to make a Hong Kong version of a tokusatsu movie called Super Inframan (aka: Infra-Man and Chinese Superman, 1975). Tokusatsu is a sort of catch-all term for Japanese movies and TV shows that use extensive practical effects, but it typically refers to the masked superhero media that grew out of Ishirō Honda’s kaij

HERE’S EVERYTHING YOU MISSED IN THE LAST 25 YEARS!! The gang is back together and we’re talking about our top 5 (sometimes 10) underrated films released between the years 2000 and 2025 (don’t give me that whole “2001 is the first year of the 21st century” spiel, alright, let it go). Join Gabe and Patrick Ripoll, along with call ins from previous Genre Grinder guests Jim Laczkowski, Luana Saitta, Chloe Waryan, Tyler Foster, Kristine Fisher, and 96 Greers co-host Barry Linn. So

Eva Man and The Return of Eva Man are, frankly speaking, not especially good movies. For softcore features, they're adequately made, even if the plots will bring Julianne Moore's line as Maude Lebowski to mind more than once ("the story is ludicrous"). That said, they are fascinating cultural artifacts thanks to their leading lady, Eva Robin's (the apostrophe is intentional), who was fully living as an out transgender woman back in 1979. Although she is probably most famous f

Ho Meng-Huathe’s Black Magic (1974) and Black Magic Part 2 (1976) set a precedent for a special brand of Shaw Bros. horror movies often referred to as their black magic series. Though not narratively connected, these films were united by content and visual themes, including elaborate black magic rituals, esoteric wizard battles, curses, exorcisms, squirming bugs, and gushing bodily fluids. Kuei Chih-Hung more or less perfected the formula with Hex (1980), Bewitched (1982), an

In the history of unlikely pop culture phenomena, few things were less likely than Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Made as a joke, the indie comic became a surprise hit, leading quickly to a cartoon and toyline worth millions of dollars. That in itself isn’t entirely unique – a lot of silly ideas became multi-million dollar cartoon and toy properties in the ‘80s and early ‘90s. No, what was so unique about the Ninja Turtles is that they endured p

Ferdinando Baldi was a stalwart workhorse director whose films always looked more expensive than they actually were. Most of his westerns could be mistaken for modest Hollywood productions. They all look nice and have coherent, three-act scripts. Well, most of them – his latter collaborations with American actor Tony Anthony, Get Mean (1976), and Comin’ At Ya! (1981), are over-the-top, one-thing-after-another action spoofs and he made a musical comedy vehicle for pop star Rit

Ho Meng-Huathe’s Black Magic (1974) and Black Magic Part 2 (1976) set a precedent for the Shaw Bros. brand of gross-out horror. The tradition was then carried on by Kuei Chih-Hung, who’d already started the Shaw horror train rolling with The Killer Snakes (1974) and Ghost Eyes (1974). Kuei’s most Black Magic-coded film was Bewitched (1981), released shortly after his outstanding supernatural thriller Hex (1980) and his giallo-esque action slasher Corpse Mania (1981). Bewitche

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 . Podcast number six covers episodes ten, The Trail of Three Wizards,  the second best episode of the entire series, and episode eleven, Sorcery Squared , which begs the question: is Cryo