From Teruo Ishii “The King of Cult”, Blind Woman’s Curse (also known as Black Cat’s Revenge) is a thrilling Yakuza film featuring eye-popping visuals, sensational fight sequences and the gorgeous Meiko Kaji (Lady Snowblood, Stray Cat Rock), in her first major role. Akemi (Kaji) is a dragon tattooed leader of the Tachibana Yakuza clan. In a duel with a rival gang Akemi slashes the eyes of an opponent and a black cat appears, to lap the blood from the gushing wound. The cat along with the eye-victim go on to pursue Akemi’s gang in revenge, leaving a trail of dead Yakuza girls, their dragon tattoos skinned from their bodies. A bizarre blend of the female Yakuza film and traditional Japanese ghost story, with a strong dash of grotesque-erotica (the same movement was a sensibility of Edogawa Rampo whose works were adapted by Ishii in Horrors of Malformed Men), Blind Woman’s Curse is a delirious mash-up of classic genre tropes, of which Ishii was no stranger, having directed everything from Super Giant films to Biker movies!
After shooting cult favourites Flesh for Frankenstein and Blood for Dracula in Europe, Joe Dallesandro spent much of the seventies making movies on the continent. In France he worked with auteurs like Louis Malle and Walerian Borowczyk, and in Italy he starred in all manner of genre fare from pol...
Beyond The Power Of An Exorcist. The mid-1970s saw the rise in popularity of films centring on the subject of parapsychology, led by Carrie – Brian De Palma’s classic tale of telekinetic terror. Precognition, or future sight, would be the topic under exploration in Robert Allen Schnitzer’s contri...
Loosely based on Edgar Allan Poe’s classic tale “The Black Cat”, Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key, from director Sergio Martino (Torso), weaves the key motifs from Poe’s gothic yarn into one of the most sensual films from the Golden era of giallo. Luigi Pistilli (Milano Calibro ...
