31 DAYS OF HORROR 2026 - Gay 5: GINGER SNAPS (2000)

Excellent in just about every way, GINGER SNAPS is one of the few werewolf movies to look at matters lycanthropic from a female point of view and also, significantly, link that aspect to matters menstrual. It's not the first time that's been done in horror — Peter S. Beagle's "Lila the Werewolf" and Alan Moore's "The Curse" immediately spring to mind — but the handling of it here involves the universal horror of adolescence writ large and the result is glorious.

This Canadian entry is proof of what can be done with a low budget and a hell of a lot of talent and intelligence. Drawing once more upon the lycanthropy/horrors of puberty theme, GINGER SNAPS deals with two uber-morbid and very close high school-age sisters, a pair of creepy misfits who, like good old Carrie White, have yet to have their first periods. The older of the two, Ginger (Katharine Isabelle), finally starts her menstrual cycle but has the misfortune of that event coinciding with local animal attacks that turn out to be the work of a particularly savage werewolf. The monster catches her newly bloody scent and, in a scene intended to look and feel like a rape (according to the film’s co-scriptwriter), mauls the living shit out of her.

The newly wolfy and hyper-sexualized Ginger (Katharine Isabelle): on the prowl for some meat...

Ginger survives and in no time flat begins to exhibit a hitherto unseen level of aggression, both socially and sexually — NOTE: keep in mind that lycanthropy is a communicable disease — to say nothing of such undeniable signs of wolfing out as getting furry in odd places, her teeth becoming more suited to tearing flesh, and the tail that she’s sprouted from out of nowhere, all of which happens when the moon isn't even full, so you know it's really bad. Ginger's younger sister, Brigitte (Emily Perkins), realizes what’s happening and sets out to cure her sister, and if that doesn’t work, it'll be time for a more permanent solution…

Sorry, but there are some things Pamprin just ain't made to handle.

One of the rare werewolf movies from a female perspective, GINGER SNAPS is highly recommended for its genuine scares, well-handled lycanthropy/puberty metaphor, and its wicked DeGRASSI HIGH MEETS THE HOWLING sensibility. And the first sequel’s actually pretty good! If you choose only one film from this countdown, this is one of the handful you should seriously consider. 

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2026 - Day 4: DAGON (2001)

Oh, the many squirm-inducing pleasures of DAGON, the horror flick that ranks as my very favorite of the current century.

Picture, if you will, a vast undersea expanse, all sound muted by the water that envelops you as shafts of light from the distant surface provide scant illumination. You swim through this seemingly endless dreamlike environment, your movements slow and clumsy, body leaden with the weight of your scuba gear and aided by the beam of a flashlight. Suddenly, through the murky darkness you encounter an opening in the ocean’s floor that is clearly the skillfully crafted work of hands unknown, a wide portal that is at once ocular, oral and vaginal in its aspect. You swim into its yawning maw and curiously explore this tunnel leading to…where or what you cannot begin to fathom. Your hands explore the eerily striated walls of the portal, and as your fascinated gaze scans what lays before you, the pallid face of a beautiful, raven-tressed mermaid smiles up at you.

She swims into clear view and you marvel at her strange beauty as her thick hair swirls about her, borne by invisible currents and exposing her lovely, buoyant breasts. This nubile vision swims over, unafraid, and removes your facemask and re-breather’s mouthpiece. Your senses reel as she kisses you, deeply and passionately, and you don’t even notice you no longer require your heavy equipment to breathe, so caught up are you in the deep-sea maiden’s unexpected ardor.

Then, with a ravenous shriek, she bares a dental array that would give a piranha pause and you awaken with a start.

It was only a dream, but you have just awakened from a harbinger of an infinitely worse, living nightmare from which there is no hope of escape for you or the companions who accompanied you on what was meant to be a relaxing getaway on a chartered yacht off the coast of Spain. You have just entered the world of the fish-god Dagon, and you’re about to learn some dark and ancient truths that will affect you in ways you would never have expected.

That’s the basic setup for Stuart (RE-ANIMATOR) Gordon’s masterful H.P. Lovecraft adaptation, DAGON (2001), the hands down finest of the many cinematic translations of the author's famously creepy works, and it really took me and my buddy Chris by surprise when we rented it to watch during the Thanksgiving weekend some nine years ago. Things get boring as hell in Connecticut during Thanksgiving (more boring than usual, that is) so Chris and I annually search for some flicks with which to kill the time. We drove all over Fairfield County on the night after this particular Thanksgiving, hitting several DVD rental stores before nearly giving up after not finding anything that piqued our craving for any kind of diversion on film/DVD. Our last stop, at some obscure video store somewhere in Trumbull, yielded gold in the form of DOG SOLDIERS — an incredible werewolf movie that I may add to this list of flicks to discuss — and DAGON, and neither of us knew a damned thing about either film. Both turned out to be exceptional but it's DAGON that really got under my skin and it's the one I immediately suggest when asked for a horror movie recommendation. (That surprises most folks who know me since I'm an out, loud and proud werewolf advocate, but DAGON is so good that it overrules my natural affinity for my beloved lycanthropes.)

The story follows the waking nightmare a group of yachters, two couples, find themselves in when their vessel hits something off the coast of Spain and begins to sink. One couple remains on the boat while the other makes their way to the isolated fishing town of Imboca in search of help, only to discover that the place is populated by hideous human-marine life hybrids, the direct result of generations of human women bearing the children of the ancient fish-god Dagon. I will say no more other than to state that the male protagonist discovers some very dark truths during the course of the story and there's even a very weird climax that, from a certain perspective, could be considered a happy ending.

There's a lot — and I do mean A LOT — going on in the narrative and chief among its many malignant wonders (to my way of thinking, anyway) is Macarena Gomez as Uxia Cambarro, the beautiful large-eyed mermaid from the opening dream sequence.

In the dream she was every man's mermaid fantasy brought to alluring life but in the incredibly creepy reality of the remote fishing village of Imboca, she’s the wheelchair-bound high priestess of the evil oceanic god who gets his condomless hump on with mortal women, thus spawning the aforementioned race of human/sea monster hybrids.

Uxia’s clearly one of those creatures, but even though she boasts a pair of floppy, sucker-laden tentacles in place of a scaly fish tail (which she possessed in the opening dream sequence), to say nothing of the enormous, gasping gills on her ribcage, she’s got that wild-eyed-and-crazy look that I find irresistible. (Yeah, you could say I have some issues...)

Crazed, incestuous, sacrificial dagger-wielding evil half-breed or not, I’d love a taste of her saltwater charms. Plus, unlike a traditional mermaid, with Uxia you’ve got a pretty good idea of where the pussy is. Always a plus.

No bullshit, if you haven't seen DAGON, run out and rent it immediately. It's fairly low on gore and violence but it's got an appropriately high creep factor that translates the crawly, sticky/slimy feel of Lovecraft's tales of cross-species interbreeding to the screen, and getting across the flavor of his works had never been truly successful in the movies until this one. HIGHEST RECOMMENDATION.

As KRS-1 so wisely said back in the days, "You can't trust a big butt and a smile."

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2026 - Day 3: RENFIELD (2024)

Giving new dimension to the phrase "Dracula sucks." (The character, not the movie.)

Robert Montague Renfield is a name familiar to anyone who knows the lore of Count Dracula as depicted in the classic 1931 Universal horror film starring Bela Lugosi. In the early 20th Century, Renfield (Nicholas Hoult), a British solicitor, is hired to broker a real estate deal for Count Dracula (Nicolas Cage), who seeks to set up residence in England, and once within the Count's Transylvanian castle to settle the paperwork, Renfield's journey into undying horror begins when he discovers that his host is a vampire. And not just any old undead suckface, either. Count Dracula is possibly the most evil creature on the planet, and poor Renfield is subjugated to his will as Dracula's pathetic slave. Through periodic infusions of his diabolical master's blood and the ingestion of bugs (apparently his main form of sustenance), Renfield gains the gifts of immortality, impossibly fast reflexes, physics-defying agility, super-strength, and hand-to-hand combat acumen unlike anything previously seen by man, and he has used those powers to procure victims for Dracula to feed on for the past 90 years or so. Hopelessly enslaved by Dracula, Renfield lost his family and home, traveling to wherever Dracula finds himself after his latest routing by vampire hunters and making sure that the master's coffin is protected during the daytime. And it's bad enough that he's the complete and utter bitch of the undead aristocrat, but insult accompanies injury as Renfield's existence is one of being Dracula's favorite target for vicious psychological and emotional abuse. The Count strips down Renfield's dignity and self-esteem at every turn, and their domestic situation is the very textbook example of a toxic relationship, and there appears to be neither any end in sight nor a way out.

Skip to 2023. In the wake of their latest run-in with vampire hunters, a confrontation that nearly ends Dracula, the pair relocate to New Orleans, and Renfield once more hits the streets in search of victims to sate his master's insatiable blood lust. At some point Renfield encounters a 12-step program for people in toxic co-dependent couples, and while there the seeds are planted for him bolstering his self-esteem and taking back the reins of his life. But first, moved by the stories of mistreatment related by his fellow 12-steppers, Renfield resolves to kill two birds with one stone and eliminate his fellow sufferer's abusive "monsters" by chloroforming them and dragging them back to Dracula's lair, where his regenerating master can feed on them at his leisure while Renfield suffers no guilt. 

While out hunting an abuser who, unbeknownst to Renfield, stole a sizeable amount of cocaine from the Lobo crime family, Renfield decimates the abusive lover, his cohorts, and the hulking Leatherface-like professional killer "Apache Joe," who was sent by cowardly asshole mob prince Teddy Lobo (Ben Schwartz) to kill the coke thieves and retrieves the goods. Terrified by the gory takedown that he witnesses, Lobo flees the scene and blows through a sobriety checkpoint manned by cop Rebecca Quincy (Awkwafina), and is promptly apprehended. Teddy is released in short order, which pisses Officer Quincy off to no end because Lobo killed her father, an exemplary policeman who inspired his daughter to join the force, and she harbors an obsession with taking down Tony Lobo and his entire crime family.

When Renfield brings home his haul of bodies for Dracula's feast, the Count berates him for bringing him what is in essence trash, and sends him out again to find blood that is "pure." Renfield cruises a restaurant for suitable fodder, and at that moment the paths of Tony Lobo, Officer Quincy, and Renfield cross in a spectacularly gory shootout/kung fu fight wherein Quincy and Renfield lay waste to a small army of heavily-armed Lobo goons. Renfield's moves are nothing short of astonishing, and when the dust settles, the restaurant is strewn with corpses and body parts, and Renfield and Quicy, now heroes, acknowledge each other with respect. Teddy Lobo, however, has escaped, and he now, on orders from his mob boss mother, Bellafrancesca Lobo (Shohreh Aghdashloo), seeks to avenge his wounded pride by hunting down the mysterious super-badass who wiped out his hit squad. 

His confidence bolstered by his heroic reduction of the hit squad to sandwich spread, Renfield takes the lessons of the 12-step program to heart. He moves out, gets his own apartment, buys colorful new clothes, and in general sets out to fix his life. But he still has to contend with Dracula, who is none-too-pleased at his whipping boy's change in attitude. Upon finding out about the 12-step program, Dracula crashes an evening session and kills all present, leaving a blood-drenched Renfield to be discovered by Officer Quicny and her partner, who automatically assume that Renfield was the killer. But shit really hits the fan when Teddy invades Dracula's lair with another gaggle of hitmen in search of Renfield, and Dracula,  who has been using his regeneration period to begin planning world domination, joins forces with the Lobos and grants Teddy the vampiric "gift," which finally gives him the means to become the badass he always fancied himself as.From there, the mayhem only escalates, and Renfield and Quincy find themselves wanted fugitives. With no other option, the pair team up and take the fight to the fortified stronghold of the Lobo family, where they engage in a final insanely violent showdown with the mob and the Lord of vampires.

Ignoring the fate of Renfield in the classic 1931 Dracula film, RENFIELD can be taken as a direct sequel to the Bela Lugosi horror landmark, the film that lit the fuse of the Universal monster cycle during Hollywood's golden age. Though gory as hell, the film is a pitch-perfect black somdey, and a damned funny one at that. The entire cast is perfect, even Awkwafina, whose presence usually sinks movies for me, and let us not forget that this is a Universal release, so I say it's a rightful heir to the Universal Monsters pedigree while at the same time taking the piss out of it. Horror comedies are a dicey proposition and they more often than not fail at both flavors, but this film absolutely nails the tightrope walk of laughs and scares.

But if I had to single out the one absolute selling point of the film (aside from the amusingly excessive torrent of spewing blood, offal, and severed body parts), it's the stunning performance of Nicolas Cage as Count Dracula. I love Cage anyway, for his cornucopia of over-the-top roles, and his full-tilt crazy histrionics liven up even the worst of the films that he's in, so casting him as Dracula and turning him loose with the material was a stroke of genius. Cage's Dracula is simultaneously howlingly hilarious and utterly terrifying, and I hope his performance here is at least given a nod when it's time for Oscar nominations. He's mean, manipulative, selfish, slyly playful and seductive, and, above all, just a total bastard to poor Renfield. In short, he's simply perfect and the film would not have been half as good without him. No lie, comedic interpretation or not, Cage's Dracula may just be my favorite take on the character.

Nicloas Cage pulls off a bravura performance as Count Dracula, seen here in a dead-on accurate recreation of Bela Lugosi in DRACULA (1931), managing to be simultaneously pants-pissingly hilarious and absolutely terrifying. 

So, I heartily recommend RENFIELD, especially if you are already well-versed in the classic Universal films, and also as a damned good vampire movie in its own right. I will definitely be adding this to my DVD library, where it will occupy a place of honor, right next to my set of all of the Universal monster flicks.

Poster for the theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2026 Day 2 - FRANKENSTEIN: THE TRUE STORY (1973)

In November of 1973, I was eight years old and already an addicted "monster kid" who feasted on the horror movies that were in heavy rotation on local TV, and by that point my understanding of the genre had not yet graduated from the kid-friendly realm of what was deemed universally appropriate. That state of innocence was forever shattered when NBC aired the two-part made-for-television FRANKENSTEIN: THE TRUE STORY. 

When I was eight, I knew of all things Frankenstein via cultural osmosis. I'd seen the doctor and his creation referenced in countless cartoons, comic books, TV shows, toys and models, pictures in monster magazines and books on horror movies, and the only Frankenstein movie I had seen was FRANKENSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD (1965), a distinctly post-Godzilla, very Japanese take on the monster that rendered him a giant that fought other critters of the variety commonly found in the films of Toho Studios. I loved it and could not understand why most Frankenstein fans wrote it off as an outright turd that was a blasphemous bastardization of the concept. Significantly, I also had not read the source novel, which I freely admit I would have been too young to make my way through or fully comprehend. So, when FRANKENSTEIN: THE TRUE STORY was announced as an upcoming TV special event, I obtained my parents' permission and sat down to watch it, expecting another mild spook show that would have been right at home on a Saturday afternoon. What I got instead was an eye-opening exercise that changed my life and stepped me up out of the little league.

If you've ever seen even a halfway decent Frankenstein flick, you know what to expect. Dank and cluttered laboratories filled with sparking electrical equipment and bubbling beakers, the pilfering of recently-dead corpses, gratuitous displays of severed limbs and assorted surgical procedures (sometimes quite gory for the time), the doctor shunning his creature for being either too grotesque or homicidal or both, the monster inevitably going on a murderous rampage, and sometimes even the stitching together of sundry body parts to craft a beautiful (if eerie) female monster. All of those tropes are found in FRANKENSTEIN: THE TRUE STORY, with every effort made to replicate the look and feel of the Frankenstein films previously released by Hammer Studios (minus the cleavage and heaving bosoms, alas), so if you are already familiar with the basics, there's really little need to go into detail on this film's plot, but I'm gonna do it anyway. It's well-written, acted, and directed, but it's basically a fun and vivid catalog of all the expected goodies, plus a few signature moments of horror that keep the film alive in the memories of those who saw it at an impressionable age. All one really needs to know is that it's about an atypically sane Victor Frankenstein (Leonoard Whiting) having Regency-era medical misadventures while working on curing death, motivated by the untimely demiseof his younger brother. The abridged version:

• Victor encountering and becoming the apprentice to brilliant alcoholic surgeon Dr. Henry Clerval (David McCallum), who introduces him to techniques for revivifying dead tissue and animating it. Clerval has successfully restored life to a severed arm, which disturbingly grabs Victor and eventually reveals a flaw in the process that leads the flesh to aggressively decay.

Victor's first encounter with reanimated flesh.

• Upon discovering that the arm is visibly degrading, Victor graphically disposes of it with acid, a sight common to Hammer's output but definitely something new to kids raised on more genteel fare, especially in American television of its era.

Proof that almost anything could be gotten away with on 1970's TV. Good luck showing this during network primetime today!

• Armed with the knowledge gleaned from Clerval (who has died from a heart attack), Victor assembles and animates a male creature (Michael Sarrazin),

The monster in his handsome early phase.

who is at first quite handsome, pleasant, and friendly, so Victor parades him around through high society.  But once the physical corruption sets in, the creature becomes aware of his ugliness and unintentionally causes assorted mayhem. Embittered, the monster flings himself from a cliff and is presumed dead, but instead survives.

State of decay.

• After accidentally causing the death — via a truly horrible horse & carriage accident — of the granddaughter of a blind peasant whom he has fallen in love with from afar, the monster takes her body to Victor's lab and in hope of getting him to restore the girl to life. He instead finds the brilliant-but-evil and handless surgeon/chemist/hypnotist Dr. Polidori (James Mason), who has solved the problem of decay, and Polidori uses his knowledge of the monster's (unintentional) murders to blackmail the newlywed Victor to use his miraculous surgical skills to help him create the perfect, non-decaying revenant using some random female body and the head of the peasant girl.

Some assembly required.

• The project is a success and yields Prima (Jane Seymour), a beautiful creature whom Polidori passes off as his ward and brings to live with Victor and his new bride, tasking Prima to model her actions on Mrs. Frankenstein. Charming to all, Prima displays a gift for mimicking expected womanly behavior, while constantly wearing a choker to disguise the seam where her head was sewn onto her toothsome body.

The homemade hotness of Prima.

• Prima's charm and beauty are soon found to mask a streak of evil that leads her to attempt seducing Victor and strangling a house cat.

"And if I don't hurt him, he'll do me no harm..."

But Prima is nonetheless a scientific/medical breakthrough and is afforded every advantage that will mold her into the perfect lady. 

• To ensure Frankenstein's cooperation, Polidori keeps the monster locked up in his lab, but once the experiment with Prima seems a success, Polidori opts to release Victor from his blackmailing clutches and destroy the monster with an acid caustic enough to dissolve stone in no time. The monster, however, escapes and eventually makes his way to the society event where Prima is being presented to rich potential suitors as an eligible bachelorette. Polidori plans to use her married and wealthy status to gain power and prestige, but his plans rocket straight down the shitter when the monster puts in a timely appearance that completely blew my mind when I was eight...

"Think I'll hit the bar!"

"Hey, baby! Wanna dance? No?"

"Well then, 'scuse me while I..."

"...RIP YOUR FUCKING HEAD OFF!!!"

After that, it's just a matter of the clock winding down and the monster and his creator facing off for a final time in an apocalyptic and rather ridiculous climax.

Though labeled as "the true story," the film instead bears a lot of the novel's spirit while eschewing nearly everything else about it. The book is a very cerebral piece in which the monster is an articulate tortured soul whom we get to know and care for greatly, despite the atrocities that he commits, while this film's iteration of the creature is basically a put-upon dufus whose crimes are mostly accidental,  with his truly awful shenanigans not really getting underway until the final fifth of the movie. Victor is clearly neither mad nor obsessed, and his pursuit of forbidden knowledge comes off as more of a committed hobby than anything else. When all is said and done, FRANKENSTEIN: THE TRUE STORY is by no means perfect, but it served as a fun and engrossing entryway into more grown-up horror entertainment and has more than enough memorable bits to make it worth sitting through. It's a tad over-long, clocking in at just over three hours (minus commercials), but it's still one of the better entries in the legion of Frankenstein flicks. 

Packaging art for the DVD release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2026 - Day 1: THE LOVED ONES (2009)

When a boy's prom night goes unimaginably bad.  

Let's start the year off with some very strong meat indeed.

After suffering through eight years of lung cancer that robbed her of all quality of life, my mother gave up the ghost at age 92 on November 16th of 2025, and on the night before her funeral two dear old friends, Daisy and Keef, came over to keep me company and stay overnight for the funeral and reception, and they brought with them a film they insisted that I must watch. It was a 2009 Australian effort called THE LOVED ONES, and it comes from out of nowhere to add itself to my personal roster of my top ten favorite horror films of all time. 

A young girl's wholesome prom night fantasy...NOT. 

In a nutshell, THE LOVED ONES is the ultimate prom-horror flick, and it chronicles the ordeal of Brent (Xavier Samuel), a troubled teenager who is kidnapped on prom night by a classmate (Robin McLeavy)  and her father (John Brumpton) and forced to live out the girl's prom queen fantasies. Unfortunately for the lad, the girl is terrifyingly insane and utterly sadistic, with the full encouragement and assistance of her equally sick father, and it soon becomes apparent that the pair have been performing their twisted game for years, resulting in a slew of unsolved missing boys cases. 

At the mercy (or utter lack thereof) of the utterly deranged.

That's all that I will say, as spoiling things any further would do both the film and you a major disservice, other than to note that the film's every element fires on all cylinders, with every piece of the puzzle slowly connecting. The performances are uniformly. exceptional, and the torture sequences had all present wincing and exclaiming in utter horror, even those who had already seen it. No lie, if you enjoy psychological horror, THE LOVED ONES is the cream of the crop. HIGHEST RECOMMENDATION. 

Poster for the theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2026 — Introduction

  

Hey, folks —

As you may know, I am stuck in an endless cycle of dialysis to keep me alive due to late stage kidney failure until the blessed day when my long-awaited kidney transplant finally happens. One of the unfortunate side-effects of the illness and its dialysis stop gap is the post-treatment exhaustion that renders the patient devoid of energy, and after six years of enduring it on a thrice-weekly basis, this year I simply do not have it in me to watch, take notes on, and write about 31 horror items at the rate of one per day for the next 31 days. I just can't do it, so rather than have a year with no entries, instead, with the exception of opening this year's round with a new essay, I will be mining the depths of over a decade of previously posted essays, with the emphasis being on films that don't get talked about much, that are so-bad-it's-good, obscurities, cult items, classics, and movies that are simply fun to talk about. Yes, it's a cheat, but my physical reality necessitates the move. So I thank you for your patient indulgence. And with that, enjoy some classics from deep in my vault!

-Yer Bunche

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS LATER

NOTE: This piece is a splicing/revision of previous entries on the subject, and I intend for it to stand as my definitive statement of experience and sentiment on the events in question. 

It wasn't like something out of a Michael Bay cinematic confection.

I know today is the day to remember the dead, and while doing just that this classic John Berkey movie poster comes to mind:

If only a battle with a gigantic ape had been the worst thing to happen at the World Trade Center...

Today is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the cataclysmic Bin Laden-driven terrorist attack, and I am filled with a great sense of trepidation and near nausea when I think of the inevitable wave of phony patriotism and jump-on-the-bandwagon “grief” that is certain to inundate the nation for about a week. I guarantee you that the bulk of media will be devoted to documentaries/tributes on the subject — all punctuated by somber arrangements of classic patriotic standards — and there will be at least one presidential address to the nation from our alleged Commander-in-Chief, a badly-read cue card performance that will politically and emotionally push buttons and exploit/exacerbate the nation’s xenophobia and jingoistic horseshit, which in turn will probably fuel yet more American youth to throw away their lives in pointless and immoral wars supposedly being fought in the name of Freedom with a capital F.

Across the nation but most flagrantly here in the Big Apple, there are certain to be legions of thoughtless vendors out for no more than some extra greenbacks, flogging mountains of 9/11 souvenirs and merchandise to blindsided tourists and perhaps even a few locals who forgot exactly how horrifying the events of that day were. The rest of the country may have been genuinely shocked by what they witnessed on the news during 9/11 and the days that followed, but the images seen on a TV, secure in the comfort of home and hearth, cannot convey the agonizing impact of what happened here. Yes, other countries have endured nightmarish events of similar caliber — on a daily basis, no less — and worse, but this was the first time something of such international magnitude struck us here at home in quite some time, and that’s what really kicked our long-held American arrogance right up our collective ass, that feeling of “How could they do this to us? How can this happen here?” and my absolute favorite, “But we’re Americans! We’re the good guys!”

How soon we forget the atrocities committed by this country and its various administrations, both within my own meager lifetime and since the beginning of this nation. My ancestry includes both Native-American and African blood among the other genetics that make up my own personal stew, and both of those groups were famously fucked over by the US government and its people, but many factions these days urge us ethnic types to more or less shut up and forget it, and be happy about where we are blessed enough to live.

I love my country but I am in no way blind to what has gone before or at present, so the situation of twenty years past did not necessarily surprise me, but what does continue to surprise me is the extent to which the American people — and to be honest, some New Yorkers as well — have relegated the horrors of 9/11 to an oft-discussed tragedy, but one that they are not really connected to in an actual, visceral way. It’s one thing to have the media inform your opinion, but it’s a whole different animal to have been there for a major catastrophe and relegate it to the file of sensational events that evoke revulsion one day, only to become a case of ”Yeah, that really sucked.” In essence, forgetting it as another disposable news item rather than the globally connective event that it was.

I, for one, will never forget it, and I hope that I never see anything else like it for as long as I may be fortunate enough to draw breath.

On the morning of September 11th, 2001, I reported to work at 7am at DC Comics' Vertigo offices, an early start, yes, but one that facilitated speaking to the company’s European freelancers without interrupting their dinners or quality evening times with their families or loved ones. I immediately got on the phone and called my favorite HELLBLAZER scribe, Jamie Delano, to hash out the details of getting him a check that had slipped through the cracks, an unfortunately common occurrence at the company in question at the time. As I chatted with him and assured him that I would remedy the situation once the payroll guys showed up, one of the editors from the collected editions department burst into my office and told me to switch my computer to the BBC News live feed; an airliner had crashed into the World Trade Center and one of the towers was burning and in danger of imminent collapse. Stunned, I filled Jamie in on what had happened and again promised to take care of his check as soon as possible. I hung up the telephone and switched to the online BBC news channel.

I gaped at the monitor as I watched the tower burn and immediately thought of the people who were within the structure, frightened, confused, in search of a safe exit, and in many cases flat-out dead. As those thoughts wrapped around my brain, a second plane hit the towers, and at that moment one cold, jagged inkling leaped to the front of my consciousness:

THIS IS NO ACCIDENT. THIS IS A TERRORIST ATTACK.

I had no experience with such matters other than through what I saw on the news, and while I was willing to accept one plane slamming into the Twin Towers as pilot error or some other such awful happenstance, two planes making such a collision one after the other was too much of a coincidence for me to write off as an unfortunate twist of fate, the odds against such a fluke being beyond astronomical. Sure, I worked in an industry that thrived from depictions of super-powered set-to’s and endless scenes of mass destruction, but that shit’s fantasy and entertainment. Here, for the first time in my life, I was faced with wholesale devastation for real, and the gravity of the situation completely rewrote my thinking on such things as the stuff of celluloid or four-color diversion.

As my mind reeled from what I had just witnessed, before I proceeded any further I called my mother in Connecticut. I knew that she was one of those East Coasters who frequented Manhattan but did not really know its geography or understand its vast scale, so for all she knew the Trade Center could have been across the street from where I worked (it was at the bottom end of Manhattan and my office was in Midtown, across the street from The David Letterman Show, so it was approximately three miles away). She was still asleep when I called and had no idea what the hell I was talking about, but I told her not to worry about me and that communications in the city would soon be overloaded by people attempting to reach their loved ones. I then signed off and set about emailing all of the freelancers and anyone else who might wonder if we’d been caught up in the attack.

Most of my co-workers made it in to work, arriving just before most mass transit ground to a standstill. The majority of the subway lines shut down, there were power outages, and then the predicted phone problems happened, effectively rendering the city incommunicado for the better part of twelve hours depending on where you were. Needless to say, work did not happen that day and we all sat or paced in a nauseous, nervous state of uncertainty, wondering if more planes would plummet from the air.

After over six hours of being more or less stranded in Midtown, the subways tentatively began to move once again and we all made our way home. I entered the B train station right at the steps of where I worked and found myself deep in a throng that crowded the platform, every one of us eager to get home and escape the horror that spewed hellish black smoke only a few dozen blocks away. Three or four trains slowly lurched in an out of the station before the crowd thinned enough for me to actually board one, and as I clung to the metal ceiling handle I surveyed my fellow passengers and found each of them looking back at me with the same silent question written on their faces: “What now?” That brief musing came to an abrupt halt as the train shuddered roughly into motion and bore us downtown, a destination that we dreaded since the line ran close to what would subsequently be known as Ground Zero.

As the B train approached the stop near the burning towers, there were long delays as the preceding trains delicately inched their way toward Brooklyn, gingerly advancing in hope that that the tunnel would not collapse. Never in my life have I felt such out-of-my-control fear, and I couldn’t help but flash back to my mother’s rampant claustrophobia, a condition that has affected her since her father attempted to kidnap her in a sack and through a window when she was three years old. If she had been on that train, she would have begun hyperventilating, shaking, and desperately trying to claw her way out of the car like a rat trapped in a box. (NOTE: that claustrophobia story about my mom is not a gag, but that's a tale for another posting.)

Passing under the potentially unstable section of street took less time than I would have thought, and as we left that foreboding underground hell we emerged onto the elevated track that crossed the Manhattan Bridge and sat stunned as an unspeakable tableau loomed to our collective right. You see, the train passed right by the Twin Towers as part of its route, which I rode every motherfucking day, and as we surfaced all present beheld a vision straight out of Gustave Doré.

The pristine lower Manhattan cityscape that I had passed for four years now had a black abscess smack dab in its center, a wound from which protruded two smoldering stumps of iron and glass, both surrounded by a multitude of police cars, ambulances, and assorted rescue vehicles, each with lights blinking and swirling, forcing the onlooker’s attention to the misery. Thick, blacker-than-black clouds of chemical smoke billowed heavenward, making the scene look like the largest sacrificial pyre imaginable (which, let’s face it, it kind of was).

The passengers craned their necks, pressed themselves against the windows and sat agog, unwillingly mesmerized by the sight. Not a word was said as we passed the inferno, but the view was reminiscent of a drive-by attraction at Disneyworld if the designer had been a mass-murdering pussy of an arsonist. The chemical fumes somehow managed to creep in through the car’s sealed doors and windows, filling us with the dread certainty that what we were experiencing was so unreal that is simply had to be real. Not soon enough, the nightmarish display faded into the distance and we were once more underground in the safety (?) of the MTA’s underground labyrinth. A commute that normally encompassed about a half hour one way had been actually and subjectively transformed into a three-hour trip along the River Styx, and I felt an edginess that I had never known before.

Upon surfacing at my subway station, I looked northward in the direction of the once flawless skyline of lower Manhattan — a key selling point for homes and apartments in Park Slope — and saw the spewing columns blotting out everything else within view, then noticed some form of unusual precipitation; thanks to the strong winds debris, ashes, and burnt office papers fell from the skies like morbid snowflakes, festooning both sides of the Gowanus Canal with remains that settled all over parked cars, houses, backyards and citizens on the street. When I realized that at least some part of those ashes was all that was left of some of the innocents removed from the human equation by a bunch of cowardly hijackers, I became stiff as a board, staggered over to the entrance of the local bath house-turned-performance-space and voided the contents of my stomach onto the sidewalk. After I had regained my composure, I headed straight to the corner bodega and bought a case of beer, then raced to the liquor store on Fifth Avenue for a bottle of old reliable Jose Quervo tequila, and finally went home to my apartment.

After dropping off my book bag and guzzling down half of the beer, I went to the roof of my building, camera at the ready, and found many of my fellow dwellers at number 647 staring to the north, some in the throes of great, wracking sobs while others just stood transfixed by something inconceivable to those of us raised in the over-confident security of a society that had kicked ass on all comers (yes, I’m leaving Vietnam out of that one).

In a numb and disconnected state, I snapped pictures of the burning towers until I had exhausted the disposable camera — pictures that I decided against developing, and I chucked the disposable camera over the side of my building — at which point I broke the seal on the Quervo, took a deep burning swig, and passed the bottle to the others who stood on the roof bearing witness. As the amber cactus squeezings incinerated their way down my gullet, I washed it down with one beer, then another, and ended up sitting cross-legged on the roof trying to make sense of the whole thing. Then a huge joint was stuffed into my mouth by another resident and I inhaled for all I was worth. “Fuck it,” I figured. ”This is the first volley of the end of the world, and there’s NO FUCKING WAY I’m facing it sober!” The other-than-nicotinal effects mingled with the fermented goodness to create a feeling of hoodoo comfort and I willingly surrendered, somehow eventually ending up safe in my bed, where I awoke the next afternoon, which turned out to be a day off from work for obvious travel and emotional reasons for the company’s entire staff. (We were notified by email of DC's closure for the day.)

The moment I awoke I turned on the TV and sifted my way through countless takes on what had happened and a nearly endless amount of video footage from Ground Zero and the surrounding areas. It was several hours later when I caught up on all of my friends who lived and worked in Manhattan and found all of them to be basically okay, although some soon showed signs of post-event trauma such as a formerly brown head of hair turning silver, and one healthy person in his early forties developing the first sign of what would turn out to be testicular cancer. Both people had made their way out of the great cloud of debris when the second tower collapsed, so the gods only know what the fuck they inhaled or absorbed through physical contact, but they are both thankfully okay now.

When I returned to work, the morale of the whole place was quite understandably fucked up and very little work was accomplished, but we all were grateful for our own miserable lives and sickened that so many innocents had senselessly perished in what was in my humble opinion a clear case of the chickens coming home to roost. I resumed my usual duties and checked in with the international talent who needed to be called, and one of our artists, a guy who lives in Croatia, forever cemented my understanding of how the rest of this world looks at such events. As I told him of what I’d seen he didn’t say a word, and when I had finished I was greeted with a very long silence. As the long distance hush stretched on I said,”Goran? Dude, are you there?” He cleared his throat after an audible drag on a smoke and said, “Bunche…I know you’ve just seen something really, REALLY horrible, but I live in Croatia, man. Similar shit happens all the time here, and the worst part is, YOU GET USED TO IT.”

Sure as hell put me in my motherfucking place, let me tell you that fucking much.

So while we all take time out to remember and mourn for those lost on or affected by 9/11, let us also channel as much positive energy as we can into the ether in hope of man someday overcoming his seemingly ingrained need to kill his fellow man for what are more often than not the most idiotic of reasons. Tolerance is a bitch thanks to the fact that we all possess some attribute, belief or behavior that drives someone else barking mad, but we've got to start trying to deal with each other if we don't want to see all that our ancestors strove and bled for washed away in a tsunami of ignorance and violence.

And that’s all I have to say on the subject. Hopefully I will not have any need to bring this up again in the foreseeable future, but here’s my multi-point, possibly bottom line on the subject, and then I’m out:

1. WAR FUCKING SUCKS. DO NOT FORGET THAT. It is wasteful of lives and everything else, so avoid it whenever possible. When innocents, women, and especially children are killed there is simply no excuse, despite what your country’s administration may tell you.
2. THE DEHUMANIZATION OF OTHER PEOPLES AND CULTURES IS UNACCEPTABLE. See above.
3. THINK FOR YOURSELF AND DO NOT LET THE MEDIA — even well-meaning li’l ol’ me — OR YOUR GOVERNMENT TELL YOU OTHERWISE.
4. REMEMBER WHAT RICHARD PRYOR HAD TO SAY ON THE SUBJECT OF WAR IN GENERAL: “CUMMING BEATS HAVING A WAR.” So get the hell out there, get your hump on, and stop all of this madness, for fuck’s sake! As Devo so wisely said, "In this world, you're just a guest," so make the stay pleasant for all people.

Thank you for your time. And never forget to make love, not war. For all our sakes.

-Yer Bunche

Regarding CONAN THE BARBARIAN # 44 (NOV. 1974)

Something I did not expect to encounter during today's breakfast reading:

In CONAN THE BARBARIAN number 44 (November 1974), Conan and cult favorite warrior woman Red Sonja are imprisoned by a brother and sister pair of incredibly powerful immortal magic-wielders who keep their eternal youth going by breeding subhuman fodder whose blood they use for an immortality elixir. Conan finds himself physically puppeted by the male immortal, mental control that he can offer no resistance to, and he is forcibly possessed by a "lust demon" before being commanded to mate with a gaggle of devolved female creatures in hope of him siring the start of a self-generating supply of bodies to sustain the immortals. 

 

It's not stated explicitly, but it's made quite clear that this was the serial rape of a very unwilling and terrified Conan, an event that leaves the Cimmerian warrior deeply traumatized. His reaction to Red Sonja's question about what happened leaves zero doubt about this. 

All I have to say to that is "Approved by the Comics Code Authority!!!" 

BODACIOUS BOOBS, DISTAFF DESTRUCTION AND BADASS BITCHES: THE CINEMA OF THE TOUGH CHICK

Let’s face it, ladies. You’re all familiar with the so-called “chick flick” genre of movies, willowy celluloid confections pandering to your perceived estrogenic desire to see nothing but endlessly repeated tales of weepy romance, makeovers where the wallflower protagonist is revealed to be hotter than a rod of uranium, “all men are scum” fare of the kind commonly infesting the Lifetime channel, and fantasies involving frumpy, neglected housewife types finding a hot and eager cock in a foreign country, usually someplace with a picturesque beach, and said turgid appendage usually provided by a tanned and tigerish guy in a Speedo that makes him look like he’s smuggling plums. That’s all well and good, but what about those times when you’re simply fed up with your life in general (and perhaps your significant other in particular), and you want to escape into a movie featuring smart, capable and tough women kicking, slicing, punching and blasting the motherfucking shit of anyone stupid enough to mess with them? Plenty of such movies do exist and while there are many such offerings, the majority of them are devoid of entertainment value by virtue of being nothing more than a display of nubile flesh and graphic violence concocted to appeal to a mostly male audience that’s satisfied with simply seeing lots of titties and showering blood filling the screen (which describes about half of the movies I love and own). So how does the discerning newbie viewer separate the wheat from the chaff and get straight to the gems the genre has to offer? Well, film fans, let this admittedly less than comprehensive handy guide serve as your beginner’s gateway into the glorious realm of the cinema of the Tough Chick.

Touch Chicks, or “broads” as they were known when embodied by Lauren Bacall and Mamie Van Doren back in the days of yore, are by no means a new phenomenon in the movies, but for all intents and purposes the Ground Zero of the genre would most likely be big-titty-maestro Russ Meyer’s seminal FASTER, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL! from 1965.

The heroines (?) of the seminal FASTER, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL! (L-R) Lori Williams, Haji and Tura Satana.

This black and white potboiler tracks the homicidal escapades of a trio of bosomy go-go dancers who enjoy drag racing against one another in the desert when not shaking their ample dairies in front of greasy, drunken Joe Sixpacks.

Tura Satana in the iconic role of homicidal go-go-dancing dyke Varla.

During one of their forays into the Californian wastes, their de facto leader, the hot and uber-butch Varla (played to indelible effect by Japanese-Apache former real-life girl gang leader Tura Satana), savagely murders a “square” racer using her karate and wrasslin’ skills, after which she kidnaps his bikini-clad, whiny girlfriend (played by Susan Bernard, PLAYBOY's Miss March for 1966, and lookalike for my friend Matt's wife). The dancers flee an inevitable confrontation with the law and in doing so they stumble across a reclusive old man and his two sons and seek shelter at their remote homestead. Turns out the old fart is loaded after a settlement from the train company he sued after being relegated to a wheelchair following a run-in with a locomotive, and Varla has her epicanthic eyes set on the prize. The geezer is also a pervy old bastard and sets his vile sights on the petite kidnap victim, but what’s a wheelchair-bound cripple going to do? Simple: direct his retarded and hulking bodybuilder son — charmingly named “the Vegetable” — to rape the poor girl while he watches, but Varla’s wise to his game… Meanwhile, Varla’s accomplices also have their own issues to sort out. Blonde and bubbly Billie (Lori Williams) — by far the most likable of the trio — is hankering for a man and aims to experience the Vegetable’s presumed Herculean carnal prowess, while Varla’s girlfriend, Rosie (Haji), struggles to keep herself in check while witnessing Varla’s unabashedly lubricious attempts at seducing the old man’s other son in hope of wrangling the whereabouts of his dad’s fortune out of him. It’s a fully packed, ultra-sleazy 83-minute masterpiece of pulchritude and pernicious pugilism, and has since gone on to earn a well-deserved cult following as the Rosetta Stone of the onscreen tough chick/bad girl ethos.

As the 1970’s happened and the fallout from the turbulent 1960’s influenced Hollywood, the action genre doors were kicked open and downright pulled off their hinges with the genesis of “blaxploitation” and the martial arts movie boom. Blaxploitation can be traced back to Melvin Van Peebles’ pioneering and uncompromising SWEET SWEETBACK'S BAADASSSSS SONG (1971) and the major studio effort SHAFT (also 1971), and once it became apparent that “black is box office,” producers wasted no time in flooding the nascent market with all manner of melanin-based movies, most of which relied on the tried and true use of sex and violence to put butts in seats.

The one-of-a-kind sheer badassedness that is Miss Pam Grier.

Without question the central female figure of the blaxploitation era was Pam Grier, who started out in low budget, shot-in-the-Phillipines “women in prison” flicks, and later set the standard for what we now consider to be the black action heroine. One need look no further than the history of blacks in this country to determine that black women have put up with and survived through a lot of truly horrible situations, so their toughness was kind of a well known given, thus making the gun-toting, karate-fighting, and occasionally castrating aspect of such characters totally plausible to audiences, and Pam Grier was exactly the right actress to fill that role at the right time.

Grier’s output was considerable, but the film that perfectly sums up what her appeal was all about is 1973’s COFFY, a classic thriller that pits Grier’s titular nurse against the drug dealing vermin whose narcotics put her little sister into a coma from which she may never recover. Coffy proves just as violent and ruthless as her prey — blowing one dealer’s head off at point blank range with a sawed-off shotgun in the film’s first five minutes — and her trail of vengeance both compels and surprises as she does whatever it takes to achieve her goal. Memorable sequences include Coffy infiltrating the ranks of a pimp’s stable of whores and starting a brutal catfight in which she conceals utility razor blades in her planet-sized Afro, and a distinctly one-sided fight with a huge and enraged bull dyke who thinks Coffy’s been messing with her strung-out girlfriend. Badassed to the core, COFFY was a big hit on the grindhouse and drive-in circuit and cemented Grier’s place as the queen of the blaxploitation milieu.

The proto-Xena cheapie THE ARENA, in which we get Pam Grier (rocking an impressive '70's bush) as a gladiatrix. Nothing wrong with that scenario!

Special note should also be given to the shot-in-Italy THE ARENA (1974) for its proto-Xena tale of female gladiators during the days of the Roman Empire, a scenario that allowed Grier to strut her top-heavy stuff as captured African tribal dancer Mamawi while wielding a trident against all comers and eventually leading a successful slave revolt. It’s cheesy and horrendously dubbed, but it’s hard to beat as an entertaining way to kill eighty-three minutes.

Pam Grier and Margaret Markov — once paired in the far less interesting BLACK MAMA, WHITE MAMA (guess who played who? — taking no shit in THE ARENA.

The aforementioned martial arts movie boom threw just about every conceivable Asian whupass scenario onto the screen in the wake of Bruce Lee and ENTER THE DRAGON (1973), and one of the most visceral films of the era was 1974’s THE STREET FIGHTER. Starring the brooding and intense Sonny Chiba as a modern day Japanese karate expert anti-hero whose skills bore none of Bruce Lee’s grace but contained all the lethal and gory effectiveness of a McCullogh chain saw, the film garnered an “X” rating for violence and gore when first released in the United States and was swiftly re-edited and re-released with sixteen minutes of gore excised, a move that effectively rendered the film nigh incomprehensible. Nonetheless the film earned a cult following and in no time Sonny Chiba was cranking out karate movies with gusto, often starring actors he’d groomed through Japan Action Club school. One such protégée was Etsuko “Sue” Shihomi, who played a memorable supporting character in THE STREET FIGHTER, and while that film did little to showcase her considerable martial arts acumen, that oversight was rectified with the release of SISTER STREET FIGHTER to U.S. theaters in 1976.

Japanese release poster for ONNA HISSATSU KEN ("Killing Fist Woman"), known to grindhouse attendees everywhere as SISTER STREET FIGHTER.

Contrary to popular belief, the film (and its sequels) have no connection to THE STREET FIGHTERother than sharing many of the same cast members, and being fine examples of wall-to-wall karate mayhem that the Japanese refined to a rather sanguinary art form. While not as outright bloody as The Street Fighter, Shihomi’s first starring vehicle is a highly entertaining — if illogical — story of a female martial arts expert searching for her cop brother who’s been captured by sadistic drug dealers. There’s really not much plot, but rather a launching pad/excuse for shattering fight scene after shattering fight scene, and god help anyone who gets in Etsuko’s way.

Etsuko Shihomi.

Every bit the badass Lee and Chiba were, Shihomi’s character is one of the Tough Chick genres most formidable fighters and is a pleasure to watch in action. (Just make sure to skip all of her other starring vehicles, with the exception of SONNY CHIBA'S DRAGON PRINCESS, since they more or less royally suck.)

Meiko Kaji classes up the place while administering razor-sharp ass-whuppings as LADY SNOWBLOOD.

Also hailing from the Land of the Rising Sun is 1973’s LADY SNOWBLOOD, based on the manga story written by Kazue Koike, the legendary author of the classic samurai saga Lone Wolf and Cub (which was also adapted into a series of classic films). Starring cult Tough Chick actress Meiko Kaji, this revenge tale focuses on Yuki, the visual epitome of classy and demure geisha beauty, and her quest to avenge the violent and unwarranted deaths of her school teacher father and brother and the unjust imprisonment of her mother. While behind bars, Yuki’s mother realizes she has no backup child to avenge her murdered loved ones, so she indiscriminately gives herself to any prison guard who will have her in hope of conceiving a son. She dies giving birth to Yuki, and the girl is raised by a kindly monk who molds her into a swordswoman of lethal skill and talent. When she’s around eighteen or so, Yuki embarks on the trail of the killers, some of whom have become powerful political figures, and her prim demeanor provides her with a perfect way of hiding in plain sight. Yuki’s odyssey is long, hard and painful, but her focus and determination make her an implacable foe to be reckoned with. Followed by an inferior sequel, LADY SNOWBLOOD: LOVE SONG OF VENGEANCE, LADY SNOWBLOOD is easily the most “artsy” film on this list thanks to its gorgeous cinematography and intriguing direction by Toshiya Fujita. That’s not to say that it rivals the work of Akira Kurosawa, but it is definitely one of the better and more unusual of the ‘70’s-era samurai flicks.

The 1970’s exploitation wave proved fertile ground for the Tough Chick movie, and perhaps no other effort of the era personifies the crazy, over-the-top potential of the genre like 1975’s THE JEZEBELS, later re-titled and better known as SWITCHBLADE SISTERS.

SWITCHBLADE SISTERS: the completely warped direct descendant of FASTER, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL! and one of the most entertaining bad girl movies of all time.

Tellingly directed and co-written by Jack Hill, the writer and director of COFFY, SWITCHBLADE SISTERS is an unintentionally (?) hilarious and insane piece of work that could probably never get made today, and more’s the pity. The ludicrous story revolves around the adventures of the Dagger Debs (the distaff complement to the way-too-old-to-be-playing-teenagers Daggers gang) and their many run-ins with the law and other gangs, and the internal power struggle between chipmunk-faced leader Lace (the scenery-chewing Robbie lee) and tough newcomer Maggie (Joanne nail, whose costume makes her look like a superhero) , who has transferred to the Debs’ high school.

Lace (Robbie Lee) shows Donut who's boss. (BTW, Donut is played by Kitty Bruce, daughter of "sick" humor pioneer Lenny Bruce.)

When Maggie’s brief affair (more accurately described as a rape that changes gears) with pregnant Lace’s meathead boyfriend, Daggers leader Dominic, is discovered, it’s only a matter of time until Maggie and Lace must fight it out for supremacy. But Maggie’s already taken over the Debs by impressing them with her assorted criminal deeds, seceded them from the Daggers, and renamed the girl gang as the Jezebels, so when the inevitable set-to finally takes place, Lace is practically foaming at the mouth like a rabid squirrel. Featuring a staggeringly loony script that’s loaded with ridiculous dialog, black lesbian separatists who train as an urban guerilla army and build a homemade tank/assault vehicle,

rival gangs who wear outfits guaranteed to wilt the audience’s corneas, howlingly idiotic massacres in a roller rink and on the streets of the story’s unnamed city (presumably somewhere in California), Switchblade Sisters can not-inaccurately be described as a less literate take on A Clockwork Orange’s teen violence-ridden dystopia, and would make for the ideal second half of a double feature with FASTER, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL!

Following its heyday in the 1970’s the Tough Chick genre mellowed considerably. Although bright spots like ALIENS (1986) and TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY (1991) re-defined the pre-existing characters Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor into icons of the form and THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT (1996)shamelessly ripped off Modesty Blaise to fun effect, the Tough Chick films offered up by mainstream Hollywood studios simply didn’t pack the straight-to-the-guts punch held by their predecessors. That may be due to an unconscious (?) backlash against movies placing women in action hero roles usually dominated by the likes of the Stallone, Shwarzenegger and Van Damme stable of male fantasy fulfillers, or it may go hand in hand with the gradual extinction of grindhouses and drive-ins as multiplexes proliferated. Whatever the case, the halcyon days of Tough Chick cinema are now behind us, but thankfully preserved on DVD, there to serve as inspiration for a hoped-for resurgence.