John Connor [Celluloid 12.17.19] horror action thriller drama samurai adventure avant-garde



Starring the iconic and beautiful Meiko Kaji (Lady Snowblood, Stray Cat Rock) in a role that came to define her career, the four-film Female Prisoner Scorpion series charts the vengeance of Nami Matsushima, who assumes the mantle of Scorpion, becoming an avatar of vengeance and survival, and an unlikely symbol of female resistance in a male-dominated world.

Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion introduces Nami, a gullible young woman unjustly imprisoned, who must find a way to escape in order to exact revenge upon the man who betrayed her.

The visually avant-garde Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 sees director Shunya Ito and star Meiko Kaji re-unite as Nami and six other female convicts escape prison once more.

The Gothic horror-inspired Beast Stable finds Nami branded public enemy #1 and on the run. She soon finds refuge with a sympathetic prostitute, but runs afoul of a local gang.

The final film in the series, #701 s Grudge Song (from director Yasuharu Hasebe, Retaliation, Massacre Gun), shows a gentler side of Nami as she falls in with Kudo, an ex-radical suffering from physical and psychological trauma caused by police torture.

Spiritual kin to Ms. 45, Coffy and The Bride Wore Black, Female Prisoner Scorpion is the pinnacle of early 1970s exploitation cinema from Japanese grindhouse studio Toei, and one of the greatest female revenge sagas ever told.




Stephen King's masterful werewolf novelette comes alive! In Stephen King's thrilling adaptation of his novelette, Cycle Of The Werewolf, a peaceful town is suddenly terrorized by a maniacal killer.

The townsfolk think a madman is on the loose, but a wheelchair-bound 13-year-old (Corey Haim, The Lost Boys) knows the truth ... a werewolf is on the hunt. With the help of his Uncle Red (Gary Busey, Lethal Weapon), young Marty Coslaw sets out to stop the half-man/half-beast before he sinks his teeth into another innocent victim. Now, time is ticking ... and the full moon is about to rise.




When her husband dies in a tragic accident, widow Corrine Dollanganger (Victoria Tennant, The Holcroft Covenant) takes her four children to the ancestral family home she fled before they were born.

Locked away in the attic by their tyrannical grandmother (Academy Award® winner Louise Fletcher, One Flew Over the Cuckoo s Nest), it falls to older brother and sister Chris (Jeb Stuart Adams, The Goonies) and Cathy (Kristy Swanson, Buffy the Vampire Slayer) to care for their younger siblings. But with their mother growing increasingly distant and erratic and a mysterious sickness taking hold, will any of the Dollanganger children survive to escape the clutches of the house s cruel matriarch?

Originally published in 1979, VC Andrews novel Flowers in the Attic was a smash hit, spawning four sequels and going on to sell over 40 million copies worldwide. With undercurrents of incest and child abuse and a haunting score by Christopher Young (Hellraiser), Flowers in the Attic is a dark and chilling Gothic suspense thriller in the classic tradition.





Ben Kingsley stars as an aging spy on one last mission to redeem his life and career when the lines of trust with his superiors begin to blur and he realizes the hunter may become the hunted.

You might also like

Leave a comment

Your Comment