We left off last column with a run-down on the first of actress/singer Meiko Kaji’s Female Prisoner Scorpion series and a hint that things were about to get pretty weird. Well, the phantasmagoria goes full bore in the …
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Author: Cameron Ashley
+Cameron Ashley lives and works in Brunswick, Australia. Aside from the local bar staff who know him too well, he toils away in obscurity on numerous pulpy projects, including Crime Factory. He lived in Japan from 2003-2006 and still works through his bizarre bi-polar love/hate (mainly love these days) for the place through his column at this site. Join him as he works it all out.
Songs of Hate: Meiko Kaji and Female Prisoner Scorpion (Part One)
She sold over a million albums, her films inspired much of Kill Bill, and when she didn’t want to do what she was asked of by executives, she said uh-uh and split for greener pastures. Her name is …
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It’s Not The Quantity, It’s The Quality: Sion Sono’s COLD FISH
Back in my days teaching English in Japan, I raised the topic of murders and why they were so frequently extreme in Japan. One student actually said in reply, “It’s not the quantity, it’s the …
Continue readingIn and Out of The Big House: DOING TIME and 9 SOULS
By his own admission, noted Mangaka (pro comics creator) Kazuichi Hanawa had long been interested in themes of confinement. An early, unfinished experiment was a manga concerning a masked man locked up in a basement. It’s oddly …
Continue readingA Very Noticeable Young Lady: Lucie Blackman, High Touch Town History & PEOPLE WHO EAT DARKNESS – The Nail That Sticks Out
In part 9 of THE NAIL THAT STICKS OUT, we delve into the case of Lucie Blackman, the gaijin hostess who never left Roppongi alive.
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Apocalypse Whores: Seijun Suzuki’s GATE OF FLESH
Welcome to post-World War II Tokyo. The Occupied City. It’s a crime-fest. Aside from yakuza-run markets, gang wars, gambling, and seemingly everybody on the grift, prostitution is so utterly widespread, there’s even a governmental department …
Continue readingMy Valentine’s Date With BUTCH FATALE
A few months back, I ploughed through Jungle Street by Don Elliott. Elliott (the pseudonym of SF master Robert Silverberg) wrote numerous smutty novels (such as Escape To Sindom, Sex Gang and Party Girl), the kind which once flooded the market …
Continue readingThrough The Lovecraft Looking Glass of Love: FATALE #1 by Brubaker & Phillips
It all depends on how you choose to view it: Fatale is a crime comic. It features square-jawed tough guys making goo-goo eyes at beautiful dames with curling, jet-black tresses and fine suits and shotguns and …
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Murder, Sex, and True Fake Crime in Sion Sono’s Guilty of Romance
“Oishi sausage des!” –Sion Sono, Guilty of Romance Okay, hands up if you know what a love hotel is? Yeah, right, feel free to skip ahead. For those who don’t: A love hotel is basically a …
Continue readingWhatever Her Name Is, She’s Brilliant: The MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE | Review
It’s a role of intense emotional shifts frequently conveyed internally. It’s a portrayal of severe emotional and psychological damage created with such subtlety and intelligence it’s hard to imagine any healthy twenty-two year old pulling …
Continue readingA Colony of Bruce: BATMAN in the New 52
Speaking simply in terms of narrative possibility, Batman is the writer’s best friend. A skillful wordsmith armed with this brooding pulp titan could spin an infinite number of genre-spliced yarns and never would the plot-well …
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Edogawa Rampo: The Godfather of Japanese Crime Fiction
In a story entitled “The Human Chair,” an anonymous, physically repulsive furniture maker builds a large, beautiful chair that he can climb in and out of to enjoy the sensuous delights of having woman of …
Continue readingDead Supermodels: The Photography Of Kaoru Izima | The Nail That Sticks Out
I love them when they are dead I want some cold-blooded women lying in my bed I love you when you are dead – Batmobile, “Dead (I Want Them When They Are Dead)” At first …
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