Men’s love affair with cars dates back to Karl Benz’s three-wheeled motor car in 1886, and it’s only gotten worse over time. This unabashed love affair has been highlighted quite often in the world of cinema, creating a genre unto itself. Yet if one were to be perfectly honest, we’d have to admit that this…
Hercules the Avenger (1965) – Review
Welcome back to the land of loincloths, muscle oil, and poorly synced dubbing. Today, I bring you Hercules the Avenger, a sword-and-sandal B-movie in all its bravado and bare-chested, bronze-age glory. This is for those who have ever wanted to see Hercules wrestle an evil doppelganger, get lost in the underworld, and suffer some serious…
Eve of Destruction (1991) – Review
Ah, the early ‘90s, a golden era of action schlock, where filmmakers thought slapping some robotics onto a generic thriller plot would make it cutting-edge. Eve of Destruction is one of those movies that thinks it’s being cool and futuristic but ends up feeling like the cinematic equivalent of a malfunctioning fax machine: loud, outdated,…
The Three Stooges Meet Hercules (1962) – Review
There’s slapstick, there’s sword-and-sandal, and then there’s whatever The Three Stooges Meet Hercules is, a delightfully goofy mashup of time travel, ancient Greece, and good ol’ Stooge mayhem that manages to make absolutely no sense and somehow still charm your socks off.
Zatoichi as Cultural Icon: Genre, Myth, and the Common Man (1962-1989)
The Zatoichi film franchise is one of the most enduring and iconic in the history of Japanese cinema. Stretching from 1962 to 1989, with later revivals and reinterpretations, the series features a unique hero in a genre dominated by stoic samurai and noble ronin.