Gabe Powers

During the 1990s, a string of international hits brought the Hong Kong New Wave to the attention of Hollywood and several top tier filmmakers, including Jackie Chan, John Woo, Yuen Woo-ping, Ronny Yu, Ringo Lam, and Tsui Hark, were given deals making English-language films. Like previous attempts to import Hong Kong style action to America, most of these films – especially the ones not involving Chan, Woo, or Yuen – were modestly budgeted and either went straight-to-video or saw only limited...

Eloy de la Iglesia was a vital Spanish filmmaker in the waning days of General Franco’s regime. He was especially renowned for his groundbreaking quinqui (delinquent crime) features, queer-themed dramas, and erotic thrillers, all of which pushed the boundaries of the country’s fascist censorship standards. He also made a number of films in the giallo tradition, including straight-forward, Hitchcockian productions, like The Glass Ceiling (Spanish: El techo de cristal, 1971) and No One Heard...

For the most part, the giallo and poliziottescho booms were populist fads, cranked out quickly for low budgets and released in other countries as straight exploitation market fodder. But there were exceptions – films with arthouse aspirations that played with genre, ignored clichés, and gained international prestige. The best examples (as far as I’m concerned) would be Elio Petri’s savvy satirical thriller Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (Italian: Indagine su un cittadino al di...