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Killer Collectibles highlights five of the most exciting new horror products announced each and every week, from toys and apparel to artwork, records, and much more.

Here are the coolest horror collectibles unveiled this week!

Nosferatu Casket from Titan Casket

In the wake of the Nosferatu popcorn bucket and Nosferatu sarcophagus bed, the ante has been upped with the official Nosferatu casket.

Created by Titan Casket, the limited edition casket features a vampiric black high gloss finish steel exterior with a red velvet interior featuring the film’s logo on the head panel and gold hardware.

It costs $3,999, which isn’t a bad price considering you’ll spend eternity in it. Plus, Titan plants 10 trees for every casket purchased!

Nightmare on Elm Street & Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 Posters by Alex Pardee

Alex Pardee lends his Doppelgangers art style to A Nightmare on Elm Street and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 for...

A good portion of Paul W.S. Anderson’s filmmaking career has consisted of video game adaptation, with his writing and/or directing credits including Mortal Kombat (1995), Monster Hunter, and six Resident Evil movies. Now, Deadline reports that Anderson is adding another video game adaptation to his filmography, as he is set to write and direct a film version of the Sega game The House of the Dead. Originally released in 1997, The House of the Dead spawned a franchise that includes several sequels and spin-offs, as well as a remake. Uwe Boll directed a film adaptation back in 2003, and that received a sequel in 2005 that was directed by Michael Hurst.

In the game, players take on the role of Ams agents, a government agency tasked with thwarting the conspiracies of organizations that threaten the world. The title comes from the bureau they work for, because their life expectancies are brief. Anderson...

Exclusive: Paul W.S. Anderson will write and direct The House of the Dead, an action-packed feature based on the legacy Sega franchise.

Anderson will produce alongside his partner Jeremy Bolt, Sega’s Toru Nakahara will produce along with Story Kitchen’s Dmitri M. Johnson, Mike Goldberg and Dan Jevons. Timothy I. Stevenson will be executive producer.

Anderson and Bolt have brought several game franchises to the screen successfully, including Mortal Kombat, the Resident Evil franchise, and most recently Monster Hunter.

The House of the Dead debuted in 1996 as an “on-rails shooter” game, fast-paced action/horror with a groundbreaking zombie premise. That included the innovation of giving its undead villains the ability to run, something that inspired films from Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake and Marc Forster-directed World War Z. It was The House of the Dead that first evolved the flesh-eaters from the lumbering stumblers that...

If you are a film fan and have been following this homepage, you are undoubtedly familiar with the works of Japanese auteur Shinya Tsukamoto. While it draws from several inspirations such as the Punk movement or even the works of classic painters, Tsukamoto never fails to be unique, even in his works which rarely ever are mentioned such as the “Nightmare Detective”-series or “Kotoko“. The director himself has often referred to his features as experiences which often make the viewer feel uncomfortable and/or disgusted. Whether you like his body of work or not, his films leave a lasting impression on the viewer and we are going to take a look at some of the elements that make it unique while also hopefully drawing attention to his some of his major works and those which sometimes fall under the radar.

False Idols and heroes

If there is one thing...

To celebrate the release of Shinya Tsukamoto’s Shadow of Fire on Blu-Ray and Digital from 30th September, we are giving away 3 Blu-Rays to lucky winners!

Shadow Of Fire Is The latest film from Shinya Tsukamoto (Tetsuo: The Iron Man) and winner of the Netpac Award at the 80th Venice Film Festival.

Part of his War trilogy, which includes Fires On the Plain and Killing, Shinya Tsukamoto’s latest examines the desperate lives of Japanese citizens in the immediate post–World War II period through the story of a child dealing with unimaginable adversity.

Bonus Features:

• Tom Mes feature audio commentary

• “The Reality Of Violence” Video Essay by Robert Edwards

• Shinya Tsukamoto and author Kota Ishii talk event

• Director and cast cinema stage greetings

• Trailer

• Slipcase with artwork from Ian MacEwan (limited to 2000 copies)

• Region B

Shadow Of Fire is out on Blu-Ray & Digital 30th September

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The...

Regardless of their artistic merit, it’s understandable that it can sometimes be difficult for mainstream cinephiles to connect with movies about twisted bodies and grisly mutations. Obviously, this doesn’t mean that these films are any less deserving of praise – it’s just that not every critic has a strong stomach. That’s why it’s so satisfying to see a production like Coralie Fargeat’s satirical body horror flick The Substance get the recognition it deserves in spite of its disturbing mean streak.

And in honor of this Demi Moore / Margaret Qualley experiment wowing highbrow audiences worldwide, we’ve decided to come up with a list recommending six other arthouse body horror flicks for your viewing pleasure! After all, there’s no reason that fine cinema should be devoid of blood and malformed guts.

For the purposes of this list, we’ll be defining “arthouse” as any film...

The Criterion Channel’s at its best when October rolls around, consistently engaging in the strongest horror line-ups of any streamer. 2024 will bring more than a few iterations of their spooky programming: “Horror F/X” highlights the best effects-based scares through the likes of Romero, Cronenberg, Lynch, Tobe Hooper, James Whale; “Witches” does what it says on the tin (and inside the tin is the underrated Italian anthology film featuring Clint Eastwood cuckolded by Batman); “Japanese Horror” runs the gamut of classics; a Stephen King series puts John Carpenter and The Lawnmower Man on equal playing ground; October’s Criterion Editions are Rosemary’s Baby, Night of the Hunter, Häxan; a made-for-tv duo includes Carpenter’s underrated Someone’s Watching Me!; meanwhile, The Wailing and The Babadook stream alongside a collection of Cronenberg and Stephanie Rothman titles.

Otherwise, Winona Ryder and Raúl Juliá are given retrospectives, as are filmmakers Arthur J. Bressan Jr. and Lionel Rogosin.

By 1964, Kinji Fukasaku had been working as a director for only three years, but had already directed eight works. That year, however, is an important one in the famed director’s long and illustrious career. For one, it gave him one of his early box office hits in “Jakomon and Tetsuo”, which starred Ken Takakura, then an actor freshly making his name and secondly, it also saw the release of what is now considered amongst his early career masterworks, the film noir tinted “Wolves, Pigs and Men”, a feature that may not have done well at the box-office upon release due to extenuating circumstances but would have an impact not just on his career but also his personal life.

“Wolves, Pigs and Men” is released by Eureka Entertainment and Film Movement

Set in post-war Japan, “Wolves, Pigs and Men” follows three brothers. Ichiro, the eldest, abandoned the family to join...

Two films from legendary Japanese filmmaker Shinya Tsukamoto (Tetsuo: The Iron Man) make their way onto bluray & digital from Third Window Films!

Shadow Of Fire

Tsukamoto's latest film and winner of the Netpac Award at the 80th Venice Film Festival

Bonus Features

• Tom Mes feature audio commentary

• “The Reality Of Violence” Video Essay by Robert Edwards

• Shinya Tsukamoto and author Kota Ishii talk event

• Director and cast cinema stage greetings

• Trailer

• Slipcase with artwork from Ian MacEwan (limited to 2000 copies)

• Region B

Vital

Celebrating its 20th anniversary!

Bonus Features

• Making of Vital

• Archival Interview with Shinya Tsukamoto

• Jasper Sharp Video Essay – “An Assault On The Senses”

• Tom Mes Audio Commentary

• Music Clips

• World Premiere at the Venice Film Festival

• Special Effects Featurette

• Trailer

• Slipcase with artwork from Ian MacEwan (limited to 2000 copies)

• Region B

on Terracotta by clicking on the image below...

Kubrick Edging

June proved to be a wild month: we talked about the wacky space antics of Leprechaun 4: In Space (listen), the underseen-but-very-good trans vampire film Bit (listen), the first half of Grindhouse’s double-bill, Planet Terror (listen) before closing the month with Shinya Tsukamoto’s Japanese cyberpunk masterpiece, Tetsuo: The Iron Man (listen).

Now it’s July, but Trace and I are firmly in a Christmas frame of mind thanks to our very first Stanley Kubrick film on the podcast: 1999’s Eyes Wide Shut.

In the film, married doctor Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) has his world rocked when his wife, Alice (Nicole Kidman) discloses a fantasy involving infidelity.

The revelation sends Bill spinning out into the secret sexual world of New York where seemingly everyone is having sex except him. Featuring an iconic (MPA-tampered with) orgy sequence and plenty of queer undertones, Eyes Wide Shut isn’t the thrilling odyssey audiences expected,...

As was announced yesterday, The Pigeon Shrine FrightFest, celebrating its 25th anniversary, has announced its scream-inducing lineup for 2024. Taking place from Thursday, 22 August to Monday, 26 August, the festival will be hosted at the Odeon Luxe Leicester Square, London, utilising all seven screens for this year’s horror extravaganza. We have already detailed what will be on offer in Discovery Screen 1 across the long weekend.

Now we have yet more horror for you, below is the detailed programme for the Odeon Luxe West End Screen 2 (75 capacity).

Pigeon Shrine FrightFest 2024 – Discovery Screen 2 Thursday, 22 August 2024

8:10 Pm – I Will Never Leave You Alone (International Premiere) Directed by Dw Medoff and starring Ken Trujillo, Katerina Eichenberger, Emma Anne Wedemeyer, and Chris Genovese, this film explores the psychological horrors faced by a man recently released from prison who must stay in a haunted house or return to jail. Medoff aims to address mental health themes,...

In a city that’s home to an endless array of overlapping film festivals (not a complaint!), Japan Cuts continues to merit special attention every July. Produced in partnership with — and hosted by — New York’s Japan Society, Japan Cuts is not only North America’s largest and most high-profile festival dedicated to Japanese film, it’s also perhaps the most well-curated, as the titles programmed across the slate’s various sections collect into a vividly comprehensive snapshot of the country’s cinematic landscape.

Case in point: The 2024 lineup runs the gamut from lavish samurai epics like Takashi Kitano’s “Kubi” and kaiju masterpieces like Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi’s “Shin Godzilla” (presented here in its new black-and-white edition) to sensitive festival darlings like San Sebastían breakout “Great Absence” and the Berlinale-minted “The Box Man.” It highlights major auteurs like “Tetsuo the Iron Man” director Shinya Tsukamoto (whose “Shadow of Fire...

Audio Assault.

June proved to be a wild month: we talked about the wacky space antics of Leprechaun 4: In Space (listen), the underseen-but-very-good trans vampire film Bit (listen), and Robert Rodriguez’s first half of the Grindhouse double-bill, Planet Terror (listen).

To kick off July, we’re racing over to Japan to discuss the 35th anniversary of Shinya Tsukamoto‘s Japanese cyberpunk masterpiece, Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989).

In the extreme cinema film, an unnamed salary man (Tomorowo Taguchi) is slowly transformed into metal after a hit and run involving a metal fetishist (Tsukamoto). After accidentally (?) killing first his cat, and then his girlfriend (Kei Fujiwara) – with his new metal drill dick no less – the salary man and the fetishist engage in a destructive battle of wills that only ends when they fuse together. Together at least, the lovers set out to destroy the world.

Be sure to subscribe to...

Oh, balls.

After concluding June with discussions of the wacky space antics (and commando drag queens) of Leprechaun 4: In Space (listen) and the underseen-but-very-good trans vampire film Bit (listen), we’re heading into grindhouse cinema with Robert Rodriguez‘s first half of the Grindhouse double-bill: Planet Terror (2007)!

In the film, an experimental bio-weapon is released that turns the residents of a small town into zombie-like creatures. A rag-tag group of survivors, including go-go dancer Cherry Darling (Rose McGowan), anesthesiologist Dakota Block (Marley Shelton) and bad boy El Wray (Freddy Rodriguez), team up to stop the infected and those behind its release. Little do they know that the army, led by the sinister Lieutenant Muldoon (Bruce Willis), is hiding a deep, dark secret that none of them could have ever anticipated.

Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get a new episode every Wednesday. You can subscribe on iTunes/Apple Podcasts,...

Actor and filmmaker Asia Argento will be guest of honor at this year’s Neuchatel Int’l Fantastic Film Festival (Nifff), a choice the Nifff director sees as emblematic of the festival’s own self-image.

“Asia is an icon,” says Nifff chief Pierre-Yves Walder. “She’s someone we ourselves have grown up with, and whom we watched grow up. She’s established herself as artist who makes few concessions, who practices her profession with absolute freedom and who is always ready to take big risks. She has a punk side and never hesitates, and because of her career – which stretches back to the foundational horror films of her father [Dario Argento] towards something more contemporary – she also bridges versions of Nifff past and present.”

“She also helped spearhead the MeToo movement,” Walder continues, “which led to some very difficult moments. She has had some shadows on her journey, and those are important as well.

In the wake of Hayao Miyazaki’s latest Oscar win for “The Boy and the Heron” and the VOD dominance of “Godzilla Minus One,” Japanese cinema continues to be as vital as ever to American audiences. That should make the upcoming edition of Japan Cuts, the annual film festival celebrating Japanese cinema co-produced by Japan Society, one of the most exciting events on New York cinephiles’ summer calendars.

The lineup, which IndieWire can exclusively reveal, contains a mix of American and New York premieres alongside a curated selection of newly restored classics. Notable titles include “Shin Godzilla: ORTHOchromatic,” a new black-and-white version of Hideaki Anno’s 2016 kaiju blockbuster; and “Shadow of Fire,” the war drama from “Tetsuo: The Iron Man” director Shinya Tsukamoto that premiered at the 2023 Venice Film Festival.

“We couldn’t be more amazed by this year’s festival,” Peter Tatara, director of film at Japan Society, who...

From The Brood to Crash and new film The Shrouds, the Canadian body horror pioneer has outraged the censors and inspired countless directors

In 2021, French film-maker Julia Ducournau won the Cannes Palme d’Or with her blistering, autoerotic magnum opus Titane. It was a richly deserved victory – a celebration of a bold new voice in cinema. Yet for longstanding fans of body horror – a genre pioneered decades earlier by the Canadian writer-director David Cronenberg – it also felt like karmic payback for the festival’s botched response to Crash, Cronenberg’s controversial 1996 masterpiece, to which Titane is heavily indebted.

During a career spanning six decades and more than 20 feature films, Cronenberg, 81, has inspired everyone from Japanese auteur Shinya Tsukamoto (Tetsuo: The Iron Man) to rising British star Rose Glass. But his brilliant Jg Ballard adaptation was denied its own Palme d’Or win thanks largely to the disdain of Cannes jury president Francis Ford Coppola.

The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival has announced its first wave of program details for its upcoming 58th edition, which is set to take place from June 28 through July 6, 2024. The Czech festival, widely considered to be the most prestigious film festival in Eastern Europe, is set to honor one of the nation’s most famous writers with a new retrospective titled “Franz Kafka and the Cinema.”

The series is set to feature screenings of a wide range of films inspired by the Czech novelist, who famously wove themes of alienation and existential angst into cryptic novels that often flirted with surrealism. Some films, like Orson Welles’ “The Trial” are direct adaptations of Kafka’s writings; but the series also includes movies about Kafka’s life, and films like Martin Scorsese’s “After Hours” that were influenced by Kafka’s ideas.

“For decades, Kafka’s oeuvre has functioned as a continuing provocation to filmmakers,...

In 2019, the documentary of 80s horror In Search of Darkness became an instant hit with horror fans. Now, a beautiful coffee table style companion book is available and is a must-own for all fans of one of horror’s greatest eras. The book is a walk down the horror aisle of the best mom and pop video store in the heyday of VHS, featuring full color photos, poster art, insightful essays and more. More than just a nostalgic throwback, In Search of Darkness is the kind of book I wish I’d had back in my years as a burgeoning horror fan but is also satisfying for the film fanatic I have become in the years since.

The format is beautifully and simply laid out, with at least a dozen (usually more) movies from each year of the decade presented in order of release accompanied by informative and insightful essays...

Shinya Tsukamoto’s Shadow of Fire begins as a troubling but measured film, but about a half-hour in something happens that shatters its quietude. Suddenly, a man who to this point has been impotent and deferential throws a small boy out a window and begins beating a woman. From the director best-known for Tetsuo: The Iron Man, and whose other films are often similarly stylish and sexually violent, that might not sound like much, but it is precisely the restraint of Shadow of Fire that makes the violence one of the more harrowing moments in Tsukamoto’s growing oeuvre.

Tsukamoto used to make movies at a swift pace: from his 1989 debut Tetsuo to 2011’s Kotoko, a dozen films. Since then, Shadow of Fire is just his third, all three of which are focused in some way on war, and each has taken longer to arrive than the one before. Whether...

Having run for over twenty years, the UK’s largest festival of Japanese cinema, the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme (JFTFP24), returns with its biggest showcase ever for 2024.

Memories play a powerful role in the mind. Shaped fluidly by individuals or time, they have been a source of inspiration for many filmmakers, fuelling their creativity to craft colourful stories. Under the theme ‘Unforgettable: Memories, Times and Reflections in Japanese Cinema’ the JFTFP24 delves into Japanese cinema to explore how memories are employed in the cinematic voices of Japanese filmmakers, from films where memories are a focal point to works where they play a subliminal role in driving or affecting people’s minds and behaviour. With an incredibly diverse range of films all based on memories, time, and reflections, this year’s programme is set to provide UK audiences with memorable stories and unforgettable moments.

Under this theme the packed programme...

The Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme, the U.K.’s largest festival of Japanese cinema, will take to the road in February and March. Its 2024 selection is the event’s largest ever with much of it attuned to the theme of memories, times and reflections.

“The JFTFP24 delves into Japanese cinema to explore how memories are employed in the cinematic voices of Japanese filmmakers, from films where memories are a focal point to works where they play a subliminal role in driving or affecting people’s minds and behavior,” said organizers.

The festival will run Feb. 2 – Mar. 31 and take in 30 U.K. cities including Edinburgh, Manchester, Oxford, Orkney, Exeter and York.

Program highlights include: the U.K. premiere of “Shadow of Fire,” directed by festival favorite Shinya Tsukamoto (Tetsuo: The Iron Man); a new entry in Nikkatsu’s Roman Porno genre, “Hand”; visually stunning anime “Lonely Castle in the Mirror,...

Stars: Tomorô Taguchi, Shinya Tsukamoto, Nobu Kanaoka, Sujin Kim, Hideaki Tezuka, Tomoo Asada, Iwata, Keinosuke Tomioka | Written and Directed by Shinya Tsukamoto

After kickstarting his career with 1989’s Tetsuo: The Iron Man, writer/director Shinya Tsukamoto returned to the Japanese body horror series 3 years later with Tetsuo II: Body Hammer – an unconnected sequel which takes its own journey regarding a man’s transformation into machine. The opening moments show the camera acting as an unseen character’s perspective, stalking an unnamed salaryman who gets killed after the unseen character holds out his index finger like a gun and fires it.

The story then cuts to Taniguchi Tomoo (Tomorô Taguchi), a married salaryman with a young son named Minori. Adopted as a child, Tomoo questions his unknown past and the reasons for his recurring nightmares. His world is turned upside down when two men kidnap Minori and inject the father with an unknown substance.

Stars: Tomorô Taguchi, Kei Fujiwara, Nobu Kanaoka, Shinya Tsukamoto, Renji Ishibashi, Naomasa Musaka | Written and Directed by Shinya Tsukamoto

After spending his youth creating short films and entering experimental theatre, Shinya Tsukamoto made an indelible mark on Japanese horror cinema with his feature debut, Tetsuo: The Iron Man. The writer/director/producer/editor also appears on-screen as a metal fetishist, setting the tone for this bizarre work as his character inserts scrap metal into a self-inflicted wound in his thigh. The sight of maggots within the wound causes him to run in fear, resulting in him becoming the victim of a hit-and-run accident.

The story then focuses on a salaryman (Tomorô Taguchi), who discovers a metallic thorn sticking out of his cheek while shaving. While he later waits in a subway station, a woman infected with metallic tentacles begins chasing him. This begins a campaign of terror upon the salaryman,...

The future looks more purgatorial than paradisiacal in “Divinity,” Eddie Alcazar’s second feature as writer-director. Like the first, 2018’s “Perfect,” this is a cryptic sci-fi body horror allegory where undeniably arresting aesthetics are nonetheless more a symptom of shallow lookism-based values than the intended critique. Stephen Dorff plays a wealthy recluse peddling the titular mystery serum, which promises eternal youth — though, naturally, there may be drawbacks. This invention attracts attention not just from consumers, but from apparent space aliens who arrive to halt its disturbance of the natural order.

Those looking for midnight-movie eccentricity will find much to enjoy in the black-and-white film’s mix of the trippy, queasy and erotic. But as before, the effortfully quirky elements don’t really add up to a cogent whole, resulting in something a mite too reflective of its creator’s background in commercials and game design — a rarefied, stimulating surface without depth.

Ah, body horror. That exquisite subgenre that makes us squirm in our seats, cringe in delicious terror, and occasionally lose our lunch. These films are not for the faint of heart or the weak of stomach. They probe, twist, and mutilate the human form in ways that are both horrifying and oddly fascinating. So, brace yourself and maybe keep a barf bag handy, as we dive into the 20 Most Disturbing Body Horror Films Ever Made.

20th Century Fox 20. The Fly (1986)

The Fly, directed by David Cronenberg, tells the story of scientist Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum), who invents teleportation, but of course, it’s not all Nobel Prizes. After an experiment with a fly goes horribly wrong, Brundle begins a grotesque transformation into a human-fly hybrid. What makes this film so disturbing is the gradual, inexorable alteration of Brundle’s body, culminating in a physical and psychological nightmare that’s impossible to forget.

Stars: Sôsuke Ikematsu, Shin’ya Tsukamoto, Minami Hamabe, Mirai Moriyama, Tasuku Emoto, Nanase Nishino | Written and Directed by Hideaki Anno

The third entry in the Shin Japan Heroes Universe, Shin Kamen Rider, steps away from the kaiju-oriented plots of Shin Godzilla and Shin Ultraman to let writer/director Hideaki Anno, the driving force behind the Shin project, reboot a character that dates back to 1971 and who has, over the years appeared in various incarnations spanning live action, anime, and manga forms.

Takeshi Hongo was a socially inept college student who only cared about his motorcycle until he was kidnapped by S.H.O.C.K.E.R., Sustainable Happiness Organization with Computational Knowledge Embedded Remodeling, and experimented on by Professor Midorikawa, played appropriately enough by Shin’ya Tsukamoto, the director of Tetsuo: The Iron Man and its sequels.

He fused Hongo’s DNA with that of a grasshopper giving him incredible strength,...

The Japanese horror boom of the late 1990s and early 2000s, spawned in large part by Hideo Nakata’s Ring, gets the spotlight in the upcoming documentary The J-Horror Virus.

Check out the trailer below, first shared by Fangoria earlier today.

From Sarah Appleton and Jasper Sharp, The J-Horror Virus is said to be a “feature-length documentary charting the origins, evolution and diffusion across the world of a distinctive brand of made-in-Japan supernatural chillers that seeped into the global consciousness at the turn of the millennium, films featuring vengeful ghosts manifesting themselves through contemporary technology again a backdrop of urban alienation and social decay.”

The synopsis continues, “From its origins in Teruyoshi Ishii’s 1988 fake documentary Psychic Vision: Jaganrei (1988) and Norio Tsuruta’s seminal Scary True Stories (1991/92) straight-to-video series, through such key titles as Hideo Nakata’s Ring (1998), Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Pulse (2001) and Takashi Shimizu’s Ju-On: The Grudge...

Maybe more than any other character in the pantheon of horror villain legends, Freddy Krueger was custom built to put the fear of god into us. Nothing about his presence was thrown together haphazardly. Instead, nearly every aspect of his design had a tremendous amount of thought put into it. From makeup effects great David B. Miller’s inspired work creating the Krueger’s crispy kisser, to the subliminal mind games played by creator Wes Craven when choosing certain aspects of his look (the razor glove was meant to resemble the clawed paws of a prehistoric predator while the colors of his sweater were chosen due to the difficult time the human eye has processing red and green together), we were meant to feel Freddy’s menace on a subatomic level.

As the franchise rolled on over the years, that visual blueprint was more or less stuck to religiously. After all,...

Feature examines film as conduit for humanity’s end-of-millennium fear, anxiety, elation and obsession.

New York and LA-based genre arthouse specialists Yellow Veil Pictures have acquired worldwide rights to Amanda Kramer’s cyberspace cinema documentary So Unreal narrated by Blondie singer and pop icon Debbie Harry and will launch sales in Cannes.

So Unreal puts cyberspace cinema from 1981-2001 like The Matrix, Tron, Tetsuo and eXisTenz under the spotlight and examines film as a conduit for humanity’s fear, anxiety, elation and obsession over the emerging technology at the end of the millennium.

“What a deep honour that Debbie Harry lent her legendary,...

The world of Japanese cinema is one of the most acclaimed and beloved. This video examines many of the classics, the most essential films ever made in Japan or by Japanese filmmakers. Why is the appreciation of Japanese cinema so enduring? "Narrator Luiza Liz Bond emphasized the 'heightened aesthetic sensibility' of Japanese filmmakers, on display in 'the tender observation of Ozu's Tokyo Story, the poetic rhapsody of Kurosawa's Dreams, the harrowing feminine gaze of Videophobia." The video essay is split into different chapters covering different styles of films: Bushidō, Wabi-Sabi, Mono No Aware, Yūgen, Guro, and Hen. Many all-timer films are featured including The Sword of Doom, Seven Samurai, Hausu, Tetsuo: The Iron Man, Tampopo, Love Exposure, Sansho the Bailiff, Tokyo Sonata + many more. Discover films below. // Continue Reading ›...

Shinya Tsukamoto has always been, to many, a man hidden behind the scenes. When thinking of experimentation within the Japanese pulp titles from the 90s and 2000s, it is likely that a figure such as Takashi Miike or Kinji Fukusaku would come to mind for the average viewer, and Shinya Tsukamoto might simply be referred to as “the guy who made Tetsuo: The Iron Man.” Yet as time goes on, Tsukamoto is slowly becoming more respected and recognized as a pioneer in the 90s and 2000s Japanese experimental pulp genre: A title which he certainly deserves. And so, now feels like a more-than-appropriate time to take a look at Tsukamoto's most thought-inspiring (yet highly-overlooked) masterpieces. This list will look at Tsukamoto's various overlooked contributions to the Japanese avant-garde film industry, from the beginning of his career to the current moment.

1. The Adventures of Denchu-Kozo (1987)

Many might be under the impression...

Movies That Made Me veteran guest and screenwriter Dan Waters discusses his favorite year of cinema (1989) with Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

The Phantom Carriage (1921)

Love At First Bite (1979)

Hudson Hawk (1991)

Demolition Man (1993)

Heathers (1989)

Warlock (1989)

The Matrix (1999)

Johnny Mnemonic (1995)

Barry Lyndon (1975)

Jaws (1975)

Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)

Nashville (1975)

Born On The Fourth Of July (1989)

Dead Poets Society (1989)

Driving Miss Daisy (1989)

Field Of Dreams (1989)

My Left Foot (1989)

Crimes And Misdemeanors (1989)

Do The Right Thing (1989)

Drugstore Cowboy (1989)

Sex Lies And Videotape (1989)

Easy Rider (1969)

Midnight Cowboy (1969)

The Wild Bunch (1969)

Apocalypse Now (1979)

All That Jazz (1979)

Hair (1979)

Alien (1979)

Fight Club (1999)

Office Space (1999)

Magnolia (1999)

The Sixth Sense (1999)

The Blair Witch Project (1999)

American Pie (1999)

The Iron Giant (1999)

All About My Mother (1999)

Being John Malkovich (1999)

The Breakfast Club (1985)

Pretty In Pink (1986)

Dr. Strangelove (1964)

Say Anything… (1989)

Miracle Mile (1989)

True Love (1989)

Powwow Highway (1989)

Lawrence Of Arabia (1962)

Southside With You...

Joel Schumacher's 1997 film "Batman & Robin" is a large, clunky, over-designed nightmare. In his two-star review, Roger Ebert referred to the film as resembling "an art-deco garbage disposal," and there often appears to be a consensus that it remains, to this day, one of the worst comic book movies ever made. Director Schumacher has even gone on record apologizing to anyone who might have felt disappointed by his film.

"Batman & Robin," while following the same Batman continuity that began in 1989 with Tim Burton's "Batman," couldn't be farther from the original. Burton's film took visual cues from 1930s German expressionism film, and was shot using shadows and steam. "Batman & Robin" looks like a Las Vegas dance spectacular, rife with bright colors, swirling lights, and neon tubing. Even the film's central villain, Mr. Freeze (Arnold Schwarzenegger), has glittery silver skin, a glowing blue mouth, and a busy, light-up suit of armor.

Shinya Tsukamoto’s Tetsuo II: Body Hammer (1992) isn’t so much a follow-up to his monochromatic frenzy of an original as it is a new approach to the same themes he explored in the first go around. 1989’s Tetsuo: The Iron Man is an industrial nightmare – a scouring pad to the grey matter. Body Hammer […]

The post ‘Tetsuo II: Body Hammer’ – Cyberpunk Body Horror Classic Spawned a Wild Sequel 30 Years Ago appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

When someone says the name Shinya Tsukamoto, many different things come to mind. ‘Creepy,’ might be one. ‘Weird’ might be another. Most people might think of him as ‘the guy who made Tetsuo: The Iron Man,’ the gory cyberpunk classic which he is most likely known for. However, very rarely will someone associate the word ‘beautiful’ with Tsukamoto’s work.

‘Vital’ might be the one exception. This blend of romance and horror tells the story of Hiroshi Takagi immediately after a devastating car crash that has erased his memory and taken the life of his girlfriend. During the recovery process, Takagi happens to stumble across an anatomy textbook in his closet and remembers his pre-accident studies. Takagi decides to enroll in medical school, during which he is tasked with dissecting cadavers. There is one cadaver in particular that he begins obsessing over, and the more he works on dissecting it,...

We’re back for a new Let’s Scare Bryan to Death, and this month we’re navigating the gritty, grimy world of live-action Japanese cyberpunk with perhaps the quintessential example of the subgenre, Shinya Tsukamoto’s Tetsuo: The Iron Man. This 1989 film is one of the more high-intensity, visceral experiences ever put to celluloid, so I’m thankful to have guest Dani Bethea to guide me through it.

Bethea has one of the best minds in horror journalism today. Formerly the editor-in-chief for the We Are Horror zine, you may have seen their work at cinéSPEAK, Studies in the Fantastic, and the Transploitation Project. You can also catch them in the upcoming documentary Mental Health and Horror and read some really fascinating long-form pieces via their Medium blog.

Bethea had a number of great movie recommendations, but Tetsuo is one I’ve been eyeing up for quite some time.

Between celebrating the many things that February has to offer make the most of your down time and check out what Arrow has to offer on their video player.    Next month's highlights include David Buchanan's surrealist Laguna Ave and Daniel Griffith's documentary, The Sleeper Must Awaken: Making Dune, a new film devoted to the making of David Lynch's 1984 film.    Cult titles coming next month included the always popular Turkey Shoot from Brian Trenchard-Smith. Things get evocative with the thrillers Angel and Avenging Angel. Some of Japan's best and most unconvential titles - Tetsuo: The Iron Man, Burst City and Dead of Alive: Final - are coming next month.    Lastly, one of our favorite directors of dynamic action and chaos, Gareth Evans,...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Following up on her 2016 feature debut, Raw, which chronicled a veterinary-cum-vegetarian student’s pivot to cannibalism, Julia Ducournau pushes her fascination for the pliability of human flesh to even further extremes with Titane. The film, awarded the Palme d’Or in Cannes earlier this year—only the second time the top prize is given to a woman director—kicks off with a near-fatal car accident, after which Alexia is left with a titanium plate fixed to her skull and a seemingly insatiable appetite for the vehicular. Next we see her, she’s turned into a serial killer and a car show dancer. In one outrageous early sequence, she’s impregnated by a Cadillac. Following a killing spree that sends her on the lam, she disfigures herself to pass as a boy gone missing years prior, Adrien, and finds an unlikely refuge in Vincent (Vincent Lindon), a middle-aged firefighter who welcomes her back as his son,...

Not the only Halloween-ready franchise being resuscitated this month, “V/H/S/94” puts back in action the omnibus series that was last seen seven years ago with disappointing third entry “V/H/S: Viral.” This belated return lands closer in quality to the 2012 kickoff feature than the following year’s superior “V/H/S/2,” as a mixed bag of entertainingly diverse if variably successful horror shorts. Going straight to genre streaming platform Shudder on Oct. 6, it should provide fans with a satisfying enough, seasonally apt new package of macabre tales still linked by a faux-found-footage concept.

That style does not seem a natural fit for Jennifer Reeder, who made the very mannered, David Lynchian feature “Knives and Skin” two years ago. That divisive movie certainly had a firm grip on its aesthetics, and she seems divested of both inspiration and conviction having to go with a hand-held video look here. An underwhelming wraparound frame for the other segments,...

The U.S. release of Julia Ducournau’s historic Palme d’Or winner “Titane” is right around the corner, and IndieWire is marking the occasion by exclusively premiering the first track from Jim Williams’ wild original score. “Titane” reunites Ducournau and Williams after their breakthrough work on the filmmaker’s feature directorial debut “Raw.” The first track released from the “Titane” score is the main theme “Sarabande,” an ominous, pulsating piece of music that’s indicative of the darkly foreboding quality of Ducournau’s vision.

“The score for ‘Titane’ grows from a short theme for a scene where the protagonist leaves home in startling circumstances,” Williams said in a statement. “Initially in a contemporary popular music style with a tinge of John Barry, later this was set with metal percussion and male voice choir using the Neapolitan Minor for a scene set in a car. As the film develops the theme takes on an emotional,...

Micro-budget movies come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, but the undisputed champions of the form are almost always those which avoid splashy effects, embracing their shoestring aesthetic, and all the wild creative freedom that comes with it. The more gonzo the better, and it’s safe to say that David Buchanan’s Laguna Ave mostly gets it right, borrowing from the best of the best in weaving together a slowly unraveling LA neo-noir with the sort of splashy campiness of John Waters, crossed with echos of mad-eyed genre greats from Tetsuo to Troma.

Russell Steinberg’s washed-up one-handed drummer is the sort of witty stoner that seemed to make up a hefty majority of American movie leads in the 1990s; furiously trying to make rent without a stable job, with his relationship hanging by a thread and quiet oblivion not far out of reach. In fact, the whole...

French filmmaker Julia Ducournau is poised to become one of the biggest sensations in international genre filmmaking thanks to her surprise Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or win last weekend for “Titane.” That film took the festival’s top prize from a jury led by Spike Lee, and will next be released in the United States by Neon on October 1 in theaters.

Fans may remember her 2016 stomach-twisting debut feature “Raw,” but five years before that Ducournau directed a short film titled “Junior.” This amazingly disturbing short centers on a 13-year-old tomboy whose body becomes home to a startling metamorphosis. Courtesy of Unifrance you can now watch the full short in full below.

IndieWire recently interviewed Ducournau about her shocking feature “Titane,” following an erotic dancer who becomes impregnated by a Cadillac and is also a serial killer. “I can tell you that I do try to create affiliation between my films,...

During the first half of Julia Ducournau’s “Titane,” it’s hard to tell if you’re watching the most fucked up movie ever made about the idea of found family, or the sweetest movie ever made about a serial killer who has sex with a car, poses as the adult version of a local boy who went missing a decade earlier, and then promptly moves in with the kid’s still-grieving father. During the second half, it becomes obvious that it’s both — that somehow it couldn’t be one without the other.

Following the cannibalistic “Raw” with another ravenous film that pushes her fascination with the hunger and malleability of human flesh to even further extremes, Ducournau has made good on the promise of her debut and then some. Whatever you’re willing to take from it, there’s no denying that “Titane” is ; a shimmering aria of...

Boxing has always been a very cinematic sport, with the its overall rules and the head-to-head mentality providing material for both captivating scripts and impressive visuals. Asian cinema has also been dealing with the concept, even if sporadically, but recently, there has been a surge of titles revolving around boxing, as we are still waiting for Brillante Mendoza’s “Gensan Punch”, which the protagonist, Shogen, having described the shooting as a once in a lifetime experience.

Among these titles, we picked 15 we think are among the most captivating to watch, as always with a focus on diversity in country of origin, filmmaker and style, although Japan has taken the lion’s share of entries in this list. The list is in chronological order.

1. Knockout

Violent, funny, dramatic and quirky are few of the contradictory words that can describe both “Knockout” and Hidekazu Akai, who plays the protagonist here, Eiji. As...

Nikkatsu has added “Hiruko the Goblin,” a 1991 adventure-horror film by cult director Tsukamoto Shinya, to its sales slate at the Cannes Market, an adjunct to the Cannes Film Festival. To mark the 30th anniversary of the film’s original release, it has been restored and remastered in a new 2K version.

The second feature by Tsukamoto, who had made a sensational debut in 1989 with the bizarre sci-fi shocker “Tetsuo: The Iron Man,” “Hiruko the Goblin” starred pop star and actor Kenji Sawada as an archeologist who investigates a tomb said to haunted by evil spirits. Meanwhile, his brother-in-law, a junior high school teacher, goes mysteriously missing together with one of his students and, while hunting for him, the teacher’s son encounters the titular goblin. Various strangeness ensues. The story was based on a manga by Morohoshi Daijiro, with a script by Tsukamoto.

Made with then cutting-edge visual effects, as well as stop-motion animation,...

We have an eclectic array of home media offerings coming out this week, led by the latest from Neil Marshall, The Reckoning. Shadow in the Cloud, featuring Chloë Grace Moretz, is also headed to Blu-ray and DVD this Tuesday, and if you missed the previous release of the Shinya Tsukamoto set from Arrow, they are releasing a standard Special Edition version of Solid Metal Nightmares as well.

Other Blu and DVD releases making their debut on April 6th include Doors, Sleepless, Dawn of the Beast, Lurking in the Woods, and Killer Karaoke.

The Reckoning

After losing her husband during the Great Plague, Grace Haverstock (Charlotte Kirk) is unjustly accused of being a witch and placed in the custody of England’s most ruthless witch-hunter, Judge Moorcroft (Sean Pertwee). Forced to endure physical and emotional torture while steadfastly maintaining her innocence, Grace must face her own inner demons as the Devil...

Tom Mes, in his book “Iron Man: The Cinema of Shinya Tsukamoto” writes: The international breakthrough of Tsukamoto and Tetsuo came at a time when Japanese cinema seemed all but forgotten by foreign minds. The monolithic Akira Kurosawa and a few survivors of the generation that had come to prominence in the 1960s – the filmmakers who made up the Japanese New Wave, most notably Nagisa Osima and Shohei Imamura – still gained praise during the ’80s, but it can be argued that the 1983 Palme d’Or for Imamura’s The Ballad of Narayama in Cannes had less impact than the award for Best Film from Tetsuo at the relatively modest FantaFestival in Rome. The reason is that not only was Tetsuo a film by a director from a new generation, it also brought a new generation of foreign fans to Japanese film. Rather than being built on the remnants of the past,...

Shinya Tsukamoto's Vital and A Snake of June are playing on Mubi in the United States in the double bill The Human Extremes of Shinya Tsukamoto.Top: A Snake of June. Above: Vital. Shinya Tsukamoto has explored the full spectrum of human darkness over his four decades of filmmaking, including the raw nihilism of 1989’s Tetsuo: Iron Man, the desperate grief of 1998’s Bullet Ballet, and the paralyzing pacifism of 2018’s Killing, just to name a few select examples. And yet the director is usually only associated with the violence and surrealism of the earlier films, particularly edgelord employee pick Tetsuo. What’s often overlooked by fans is that these earlier films stem from the same fascinations foregrounded in his later, more restrained works like Killing (2018) and Fires on the Plain (2014): abject corporeality amid environments molding us as much as we exist in them, and ontological explorations of breaking through those constraints.

“You’re not in touch with your feelings.”

Considering the majority of his work deals with the link of the body, our consciousness and the (often urban) environment, making a film about sexuality was perhaps just the logical next step in the career of Shinya Tsukamoto. In fact, the director admits having thought about that idea ever since the production of “Tetsuo: The Iron Man”, especially since both works demonstrate narrative and formal parallels. Much like this film’s premise the story for the project, which would later be called “A Snake of June”, also consisted of a minimalist environment in which a character is stalked and finally confronted by a villainous person.

“A Snake of June” is streaming on Mubi

However, it took him longer than expected to make “ A Snake of June”. In the end, this time benefited the project to a certain degree, Tsukamoto admits, for his relationship towards the opposite sex,...