@synth_cinema: 2026

Horror Bites - Afterlife

THE DEAD AND THE DEADLY (1982)

Just for a change of pace after so many Mr. Vampire movies it's time for... spooky hijinks and magic rituals. While it's not the first of its kind (with films like this existing even early than Spooky Encounters) it does seem to be the genesis of Lam Ching-ying playing a priest who battles ghosts. At first it seems that he's just here as an archetypal old master, complete with wrinkle makeup and receding hair, but soon enough all the usual yellow robes and spells show up. However, this isn't really about that until the third act and most of the story is about Sammo Hung getting into slapstick situations... which is less compelling.

Review Roundup - Regeneration

GODZILLA: MINUS ZERO (2026)

After a few years (and a minor increase in budget) the big guy himself is back after apparently being obliterated in the previous movie. Which shouldn't be a big surprise given the sequel bait in Godzilla: Minus One. However, it is unusual that a sequel like this actually got the green light; the Toho franchise hasn't had one movie connect to another since 2003. It seemed that despite suggestions of what might come next (particularly Shin Godzilla) the studio was firmly set on one and done stories. But beyond delivering more monster madness can a follow up actually deliver on the characterisation that hooked audiences last time around?

Horror Bites - Hopping Mad (Bonus)

MAGIC COP (1990)

Aka Mr. Vampire 5. Not to be confused with the other part five (see Vampire vs. Vampire) or Mr. Vampire 1992. That's right; here's where the series gets confusing with numbers and enters the bizarre realm of films like the Yes, Madam! series. But while those non-sequels swapped out their lead star here Lam Ching-ying is (usually) present in some capacity. This time it's a return to the modern world for more fish out of water comedy and more black magic madness. His sidekicks are still two idiots and a pretty girl, there's another witch, and there are some familiar gadgets. But while the usual tropes are back it's also a return to things like fresh supernatural elements and good pacing.

Horror Bites - Hopping Mad Part III

MR VAMPIRE SEQUELS (1988-1989)

You'd think that given the success of a movie formula the 'same but different' approach would work the best. However, despite familiar faces and occasional nods to past instalments this is a series that often has an identity crisis. At least parts four and five include vampires this time around, but the actual quality is debatable. Once again neither film is a real sequel to anything that came along earlier. They both toy with the framework in different ways... but it seems obvious that less odd experimentation and more direct inspiration would have been simpler and more effective.

Horror Bites - Hopping Mad Part II

MR VAMPIRE SEQUELS (1986-1987)

While there are often a lot of sequels to be found in the world of Hong Kong action many of them fail to capture the lighting in a bottle of the original film. They can be weirdly thin and yet at the same time over-written and convoluted. Something like Project A: Part II might have some great set pieces but it lacks the heart and the straightforward story. But at least in that case it was a clear cut successor to the first movie that continued where things left off. With these second and third instalments neither of them is a real continuation which is a problem. However, other issues also detract from the overall experience.

Horror Bites - Hopping Mad

MR. VAMPIRE (1985)

Time for an old favourite from the archives of Hong Kong cinema; one that's a great blend of all the usual martial arts stunts and humour you get in many of these Golden Harvest features, plus some of the weirdest vampire lore out there. If you like strange supernatural rules (and inept people breaking them) this is worth checking out. Forget the garlic and the holy water, these are not your usual bloodsuckers. They hop about on two legs because of rigor-mortis, and their state of death also leaves them blind. Hold your breath or they'll smell you hiding... somehow. Apparently the dead have improved senses elsewhere. They also have a strong dislike for certain kinds of rice...

HCF Review - Momotaro

MAGIC OF SPELL (1988)

Following on from The Haunted Cop Shop it’s time to turn things up a notch and get into something truly bonkers. Forget about ghosts and bloodsuckers, forget about dreamscapes, and the modern times; this is ancient Japan… by way of Taiwanese cinema. Which means this is one of the greatest sub-genres; fantasy Buddhism where the power of Bodhisattva is less about enlightenment and more about laser beams. Of course there is some connecting tissue with this as a collection of supernatural comedies. There are still plenty of slapstick moments, and crazy shenanigans along the way, so again how much of this holds up in terms of a coherent movie overall will need examination.

Magic of Spell aka Peach Boy 2 Ku Pao-Ming

HCF Review - Precinct 13

THE HAUNTED COP SHOP (1987)

Time for some more antics in the next part of this collection. Much like the first instalment in the box set, Scared Stiff, this is a story that feels like half a dozen ideas thrown together. Surely with the boiler-plate structure of a buddy cop film this will be more cohesive? In essence it’s just about two bumbling officers trying to prove the existence of the supernatural; to avoid angering their superiors after a man in custody vanishes. The main plot about the police station being built on an old nightclub used by Japanese soldiers decades earlier is also a strong hook. However, not everything here is as straightforward as it sounds.

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HCF Review - Dreamscape

SCARED STIFF (1987)

Many fans of Hong Kong cinema will know the sinking feeling of watching a genre movie turn into a slapstick farce. The credits might have big names like Sammo Hung and Lau Kar-Wing at the top in the role of producer and director respectively, along with the classic Golden Harvest logo, but this can always be a bait and switch. An action movie may only be twenty minutes of actual kung-fu with the rest of the story being about a bunch of losers trying to peep at women getting undressed. However, while there is some of that nonsense included here the rest of the film isn’t so easily described. In fact it comes across as three or four genres in one.

Review Roundup - Squirm

RESIDENT EVIL (2026)

Like their video game namesake the Resident Evil movie series has been through a lot of rough patches. But unlike the original Capcom franchise, which went downhill after entering an action heavy phase, the films derived from it started bad and only got worse. Some viewers were sated by what was essentially a jumble of post-The Matrix action, 3D effects, and key jangling references, which meant that plenty of money was made despite the lack of internal logic and quality control. Subsequent attempts to revive the name for streaming didn't fare any better despite the games themselves making a course correction. Is this new iteration more of the same?

HCF Review - Blood Brothers

A BETTER TOMORROW (1986)

John Woo’s first foray into ‘heroic bloodshed’, might be considered low-key in comparison to his later, more pyrotechnical, films. But the movie has something; a certain immediacy, an undeniable cool factor that’s obvious right away. Releasing in an explosion of new ideas, months after both Police Story and Yes Madam, there’s just a kind of magic about it thanks to a combination of wardrobe choices, editing, and music. While the (highly entertaining) sequel is an outrageous affair with a gigantic body count and a verbal tirade about a plate of rice, the first chapter is less about spectacle and melodrama. So let’s go back the original classic; it’s A Better Tomorrow.

HCF Review - Jigoku

BOHACHI BUSHIDO: CODE OF THE FORGOTTEN EIGHT (1973)

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before; an enigmatic warrior arrives in a strange town and is enlisted by a nefarious local outfit to do the dirty work of a scheming villain… but his personal ideals interfere with the business at hand. The world of Samurai movies (and indeed Westerns) offers plenty of examples of this story. Which means a fresh take requires a certain kind of flair, or interesting take on the formula, to make it memorable. In this particular case Teruo Ishii’s vision is to take the material from an adult manga (from the writers of Lone Wolf and Cub) and fill much of the film’s running time with nudity and torture. Are the results a case of style (and sadism) over substance?

HCF Review - NeverEnding Story

EXIT 8 (2025)

With recent trends in both low budget ‘liminal space’ horror shorts and Japanese time loop stories, such as River, it’s perhaps unsurprising that someone took both and combined them into a single thriller. This is also a video-game adaptation that has a small scale premise to work with resulting in a film that doesn’t have much room to go wildly off target like so many others. But when the original horror-meets-walking-simulator is a breezy experience that lasts minutes, rather than hours, can an entire movie be consistently engaging? Let’s examine whether this micro concept, mostly in a single location, can maintain the suspense factor.

HCF Review - The Wanderers

ADRIFT IN TOKYO (2007)

A tale of desperate loners, debt collectors, and even potential murder, isn’t exactly the sort of fare that is typically considered easy watching. But Satoshi Miki’s meandering hangout movie Adrift in Tokyo is anything but typical. Rather than being something like the gruelling Yakuza pictures one of its stars has appeared in this is more a strange and melancholy drama. It’s slow paced instead of gripping; punctuated by occasional moments of slapstick rather than violence. Can such a laid-back movie with a resounding lack of thrill power be engaging or even thought provoking?

HCF Review - The Getaway

ONCE A THIEF (1991)

Discussions of John Woo’s classic run in the late 1980s to early 1990s often omit this caper, but unlike Bullet in the Head it’s not a case of it being too bleak. Plus the stars are all here; Leslie Cheung and Chow Yun-Fat return from the Better Tomorrow films, as do several other familiar faces. So are the locations the director enjoys; this time Paris. Perhaps it’s because the whole thing has a tendency to get rather silly. Some of the lead characters are named after desserts and Violet Lam’s score is very whimsical after all. The explosive set pieces are present and correct, however, there’s something off about the construction of the story itself that goes beyond some of the strange tonal shifts. Is it more than the sum of these parts?

Review Roundup - Gods and Monsters

THE ODYSSEY (2026)

Like The Dark Knight there's a sense that some of the material in Homer's epic, and its predecessor The Iliad, could have a tendency to become rather silly. There are a lot of choices to unpack in Christopher Nolan's modernist (or perhaps minimalist) adaptation but the way he's decided to depict certain ideas and images is one of the biggest. He must have considered this one of the central problems; that a giant wooden horse, much like the caped crusader, is hard to take seriously. Going full swords and sandals fantasy camp was never on the cards so the results aren't entirely surprising. However, there's still plenty to enjoy in the resulting epic.

HCF Review - Gold Rush

BULLET IN THE HEAD (1990)

Of all John Woo’s Hong Kong projects this is probably the most overlooked, perhaps because it doesn’t star Chow Yun-fat, or perhaps because of its sometimes gruelling nature. The behind the scenes story is well known but after a disagreement with producer Tsui Hark about a third A Better Tomorrow the pair went their separate ways. The official third movie is best described as tepid; mistaking slow-motion for style. Bullet in the Head on the other hand is a bleak and blistering assault on the senses that uses its Vietnam scenery tell a nihilistic tale of brotherhood gone awry. Perhaps it’s just a metaphor for the end of a film-making partnership.

Horror Bites - Man Yells at Cloud

NOPE (2022)

Nope is a weird movie. In a complementary sense; a long forgotten review of Get Out on this blog suggested that it should have been more unnerving and also funnier. Which is an oddly specific complaint that has been addressed here. The characters are more eccentric, the tone is more peculiar, and the horror moments are much stranger. Which is saying something when the overall vibe of the movie is a sci-fi adventure borrowing from UFO films as well as Jaws and other influences. But with all this going on does the film as a whole manage to be compelling beyond the sum of its parts?

Review Roundup - Eye of the Tiger

SEND HELP (2026)

Time for a double helping of people surviving dire situations and overcoming certain doom. In the case of Send Help the ideal version of this story was already told in Hell in the Pacific; pitting an unlikely duo stranded on an island against each other. However, this is also the return of Sam Raimi who hasn't directed anything fun for very a long time. The couple of misfires after 2009's Drag Me To Hell don't really count and perhaps he agrees; teaming up with Rachel McAdams from Doctor Strange and giving her something more interesting to do. Let's see if it works and whether the old Evil Dead magic is still present and correct...

HCF Review - Déjà Vu

RIVER (2023)

While Junta Yamaguchi’s Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes asked what someone might do if they could see (a very short time) into the future, this later project asks what might happen if that same amount of time kept repeating itself. Taking the concept from Groundhog Day and shrinking it down so much doesn’t seem like a great idea. How can there even be enough room to tell a story and what could it really have to say? However, by combing this micro-scale with a group of characters who all become trapped in the experience it does something both familiar and fresh with the premise.

HCF Review - Summer Daze

SUMMER TIME MACHINE BLUES (2005)

Time travel stories exist in a variety of formats whether they’re deadly serious or farcical, but sometimes it’s fun to sit back and enjoy a story with low stakes. In this case the rather silly tone disguises a well planned time-warp adventure, even if the story revolves around some kids trying to kill time during a heatwave. However, the plot is in the realm of something like Twelve Monkeys where the timeline is set rather than Back to the Future (which gets name dropped). The results might not be as tightly scripted as its successor Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes but it’s highly enjoyable, so let’s take a look at why.

HCF Review - Bullet Ballet

HARD BOILED (1992)

‘John Woo is… God,’ claims an old trailer for his final Hong Kong action movie. The quotes used almost manage to capture the madness that is Hard Boiled, a crime thriller from a master at the zenith of his powers, which is also described as ‘more exciting than a dozen Die Hards‘. But look again and you’ll find that this hyperbole is correct; the results are an exaggerated exercise in action cinema. After the caper Once a Thief Woo would return to the genre he helped create to give us his magnum opus. It would be the distillation of everything that had come before, showcasing his fascination with meticulously staged gun battles and brotherhood. Ideas of loyalty and corruption would be explored one more time, while giving the forces of law and order a chance to be the heroes.

Review Roundup - Planes, Trains...

SISU: ROAD TO REVENGE (2025)

Time for an unexpected (but welcome) surprise in the form of a sequel to the Finnish action flick Sisu. Was this even advertised? The box office takings, much like 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, suggest not. The theatrical screenings were also limited which doesn't exactly help matters. Maybe they should have just stuck a 'Part 2' on the title and saved themselves some trouble. Still, the immortal, aka Korpi, aka Sisu if you like, he's back! Can the simple race across a 1940s wasteland for a stash of gold be done again? Is the 'same but different' approach always the best idea?

HCF Review - Turf Wars

BROTHER (2000)

There are a lot of Japanese gangster films out there for those looking for a particular blend of loyalty and bloodshed. Directors like Kinji Fukasaku and Seijun Suzuki will be an essential part of any Yakuza fan’s movie night rotation, as will images of seedy hostess clubs and severed fingers. It’s a path worth taking for both the staple ingredients and those elements which make one film-maker’s style distinct from another. Which brings us to this thriller from Takeshi Kitano. Released a decade into his directing career it’s more a ‘greatest hits’ movie rather than something fresh. Does it have more style and character than the typical stories in this genre?

Review Roundup - Danse Macabre

28 YEARS LATER: THE BONE TEMPLE (2026)

While the previous instalment of 28 Years Later was very experimental in a technical sense (and subsequently had some swings and misses) there was always a feeling that a sequel might fill some of the narrative gaps. This sort of expectation can be a mistake of course, and often in the horror genre it's a case of diminishing returns. Fortunately in this case, even if the title is rubbish, there are less plot conveniences and child in peril elements. In fact almost all of the story about a boy and his father is absent. Instead things go in another direction while keeping to the family dynamics in a different way.

HCF Review - Selling Out

CLOUD (2024)

It’s time to head back into the woods for another strange tale of ambition and chaos. However, unlike it’s partner in this set, Charisma, this is less of a philosophical tale and more a straightforward crime drama. Which is to say it’s about as straightforward as you might expect from Kiyoshi Kurosawa by now. There are still many darkly comedic moments and surreal images, but the overall genre is more definitive. Coming more than twenty years later does the story have similar musings on the nature of obsession? Let’s examine how this release, an exclusive to this set, stacks up as an eclectic double feature.

HCF Review - Into the Wild

CHARISMA (1999)

Since certain ventures into the realm of Japanese cinema have been an assault on the senses recently, it’s time to take a look at something on the other end of the spectrum. While there are moments of both dark comedy and creeping dread, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Charisma is more of a mood movie than a thriller; a strange and contemplative affair, often picturesque and often slow moving. Still, in terms of a narrative there’s still plenty of bizarre and enigmatic events to consider. It’s an intriguing experience to say the least but is it a crime story, an ecological drama, or just a mushroom fuelled trip into the wilderness?

HCF Review - PIN...

964 PINOCCHIO (1991)

The realm of extreme cinema can pose of lot of unusual questions, but in the case of 964 Pinocchio it’s mainly ‘how much is too much?’ How much convulsing and puking does it take to compete with Zulawski’s Possession? How many weird metaphors will it take to top the work of Shinya Tsukamoto? The director, Shozin Fukui, worked on the latter in the late 1980s and clearly had these references in mind when putting together this gruelling mixture of guerilla film-making and cyberpunk nightmare fuel. Clearly his instinct was that more is more, so let’s take a look at how much of the final product works as a story.

Monster Bites - Shellshock

GAMERA THE BRAVE (2006)

The 1990s trilogy concluded with the idea that Gamera would continue to fight on against his usual enemies. However, after distribution of part three went to Toho, the Godzilla owners, Daiei dissolved and became part of Kadokawa Studios. Seven years passed and they oversaw a series reboot much like the Godzilla films. Which could have been fruitful; the series might have benefited from looser continuity a new ideas. Unfortunately, this is Gamera's last big screen appearance and the only movie from this new era thanks to its commercial failure. Is it a disaster or is this just because it wasn't the anticipated part four?

Monster Bites - Fireball XL

GAMERA 2: ATTACK OF LEGION (1996)

Hold on, wasn't it called Advent of Legion? Assault of 'The Legion'? Or was it Invasion? It's been a while since this 1990s monster trilogy was mentioned here, so the details are sketchy and the release titles are varied. In fact it must have been nearly a decade ago in blogging time. Ten years of writing utter rubbish that nobody reads as a substitute for any semblance of mental wellbeing, where does the time go? In those days the old DVDs you could get in the mail were a source of all kinds of world cinema gems, but that was before the dark times, before the age of streaming. Now thankfully there are new Blu-ray sets, so let's take a look to see if this is still the best part of the series.

Review Roundup - Treading Water

AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH (2025)

Ah James Cameron, once master of the low budget thrill ride, the big budget tech demo, and the director of the ultimate sequel. In some ways he never recovered from the generic nature of True Lies and the mushy slog of Titanic but that's a story for another time. Of course most recently, in a relative sense, the sanctuary moon of 'Pandora' took his focus for fifteen years, not counting all that visual effects development. Which isn't to say this world doesn't have its share of Saturday morning cartoon level thrill power. So when this instalment, perhaps the last but probably not, threatens to be something deeper it's a shame it doesn't stick the landing.

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