Gabe Powers

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 Kickboxer (1989)...

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 that was also used...

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 one of that here)...