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(The following review pertains to the UK release of the film on Region B/2 formats)

By Howard Hughes

The Girls with the Dragon Tattoo

Following on from its release of ‘Lady Snowblood’ and ‘Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance’ in 2012, UK company Arrow Films has released another Japanese cult classic in ‘Blind Woman’s Curse’, a film which mixes swordplay, horror and the supernatural into a bloody vengeance scenario.

Also known as ‘Kaidan nobori ryû’, ‘The Tattooed Swordswoman’ and ‘Black Cat’s Revenge’, this is unusual action fare from director Teruo Ishii. Meiko Kaji, who went on to star as Lady Snowblood, cuts her teeth – and several villains’ major arteries – as Akemi, the head of the Tachibana Clan. In the opening rain swept swordfight, she accidentally blind’s Aiko (Hoki Tokuda), the younger sister of Yakuza clan leader Boss Goda. After a three-year stretch in prison, Akemi returns to her role as Tachibana leader,...

To mark the 50th Anniversary of one of the most successful movie franchises of all time and as James Bond prepares for his 23rd official outing in Skyfall later this year, I have been tasked with taking a retrospective look at the films that turned author Ian Fleming’s creation into one of the most recognised and iconic characters in film history.

After the phenomenal box-office success of Thunderball in 1965 the Bond series producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman were left looking for an out of this world adventure for Bond’s fifth outing, You Only Live Twice. When Richard Maibaum the screenwriter of all the previous films became unavailable the producers hired popular short story and children’s writer Roald Dahl to pen the screenplay. Dahl had been a close friend of Fleming but described the original novel as “Fleming’s worst book”. Taking only a handful of ideas from the story,...