1970 • Japan • Directed by Teruo Ishii

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 maj...

In the wake of the success of Dario Argento's ground-breaking giallo "The Bird with the Crystal Plumage", numerous other directors stepped forward to try their hand at these lurid murder-mysteries. At the forefront was Sergio Martino (The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh, Torso), whose sensual 70s thril...

Valentina - a model who, in the midst of a drug-fuelled photoshoot, witnesses a brutal murder in the apartment opposite hers. But when it becomes clear that the savage slaying she describes relates to a crime that took place six months earlier, the police are at a loss - forcing Valentina to solv...

In Death Walks on High Heels (1971), exotic dancer Nicole (Navarro), the daughter of a murdered jewel thief, finds herself terrorised by a black-clad assailant determined on procuring her father's stolen gems. Fleeing Paris and her knife-wielding pursuer, Nicole arrives in London only to discover...

A sex maniac is prowling the streets of Perugia, targeting the picturesque university town's female students. Alarmed at the plummeting life expectancy of the student body, Jane (Suzy Kendall, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage) and her three friends elope to a secluded country villa - only to dis...

The success of Dario Argento's 'The Bird with the Crystal Plumage' ushered in a host of imitators, seeking to capitalise on this new, modern take on the giallo thriller. Many were highly derivative, but a number nonetheless rose above the crowd thanks to skilful execution and a willingness to exp...

From Lucio Fulci, the godfather of gore (The Psychic, The Beyond), comes one of the most powerful and unsettling giallo thrillers ever produced: his 1972 masterpiece Don't Torture a Duckling.

When the sleepy rural village of Accendura is rocked by a series of murders of young boys, the supersti...

1972 • Italy • Directed by Emilio P. Miraglia

An age-old family curse hits sisters Kitty and Franziska following the death of their grandfather Tobias. Every hundred years, so the legend goes, the bloodthirsty Red Queen returns and claims seven fresh victims. Was Tobias just the first... and are...

1977 ･ United States ･ Directed by John Grissmer

In Scalpel, Robert Lansing plays Dr. Phillip Reynolds, a man whose daughter Heather (Judith Chapman: As the World Turns, General Hospital) has run away from home a year prior following the suspicious death of her boyfriend. When he happens across ...

1973 • Japan • Directed by Kijû Yoshida

Coup d'Etat returns to the past for a biopic of Ikki Kita, the right-wing extremist who sought to overthrow the government in 1936. Yoshida considered the film to be the culmination of his work, promptly retiring from feature filmmaking following its compl...

A young man goes missing after visiting his girlfriend's isolated country home. His sister and her boyfriend trace him to the creepy mansion, but their search becomes perilous when they uncover a gruesome family history.

1974 • Japan • Directed by Kazuhiko Yamaguchi

After the massive success of 'The Street Fighter', Toei decided to build a new karate series around a female lead and cast a young actress who had appeared in a cameo role alongside her mentor Sonny Chiba. Still a teenager at the time, Etsuko Shihomi...

Finally in 1976, Toei produced 'Sister Street Fighter: Fifth Level Fist', an unofficial follow-up to the series helmed by original Street Fighter director Shigehiro Ozawa. Shihomi stars as Kiku Nakagawa, the daughter of a Kyoto kimono shop owner who'd rather practice karate than study flower arra...

1974 • Japan • Directed by Kazuhiko Yamaguchi

Released only three months after the original film, the sequel 'Sister Street Fighter: Hanging By a Thread', once again follows Koryu Lee as she investigates another smuggling ring, this time involving diamonds implanted into the derrieres of prosti...

Molly really knows how to cut men down to size. Representing something of an anomaly in the career of director Matt Cimber (whose other credits include such blaxploitation fare as The Candy Tangerine Man) The Witch Who Came from the Sea is an unnerving journey into madness and murder starring Mil...

Before the influence of Dario Argento's 'The Bird with the Crystal Plumage' permeated every corner of the giallo genre, another strain of these distinctive Italian thrillers enjoyed considerable success. These "melodrama gialli", heavily inspired by Clouzot's 'Les diaboliques', relied less on gra...

Heroic Purgatory pushes the dazzling cinematic language of Eros + Massacre even further, presenting a bleak but dreamlike investigation into the political discourses taking place in early seventies Japan.

Still traumatised by the loss of her husband, well-meaning social worker Ann Gentry (Anjanette Comer: The Loved One) throws herself into her latest assignment: the case of "Baby", a 21-year-old man with the mind of an infant - who crawls, cries and has yet to make it out of nappies. But Baby's fa...

Welcome to Mykonos, the holiday destination of choice for sun, sea and slaughter! From cult director Nico Mastorakis, Island of Death is a travelogue of atrocities with scenes so strong that the British Government was once compelled to ban it as a “video nasty”. Arriving on the idyllic Greek isla...

Lake of Dracula begins with a young girl suffering a terrifying nightmare of a vampire with blazing golden eyes. Eighteen years later, the dream is revealed to be a hellish prophecy when a strange package containing an empty coffin mysteriously turns up at a nearby lake.

1978 • Italy • Directed by Federico Fellini

Made in 1978 for Italian television, Orchestra Rehearsal is possibly Fellini's most satirical and overtly political film. An allegorical pseudo-documentary, the film depicts an Italian television crew's visit to a dilapidated auditorium (a converted 13...

A spate of highly sexualized murders is rocking a prestigious Milanese fashion house. Ambitious photographer Magda (Edwige Fenech, Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key) and her on-off boyfriend, love rat Carlo (Nino Castelnuovo, The English Patient), team up to crack the case. But, ...

1975 • Japan • Directed by Kazuhiko Yamaguchi

The final film of the official trilogy, Return of the Sister Street Fighter, finds Koryu Lee back in Yokohama searching for a woman who has become the mistress of another crime kingpin. Kurata again co-stars but this time as a crazed fighter working ...

When Battles Without Honour and Humanity first hit Japanese screens in January 1973, partially inspired by the success of The Godfather, it blasted out a new Ground Zero for crime cinema not only in Japan, but in the rest of the world, and spawned a legendary series that would lead to additional ...