Perverse Permission

For this next episode in our Wong Jing series, writer and critic Will Sloan joins John and Samm to talk about Jing’s  God of Gamblers trilogy: God of Gamblers (1989), starring Chow Yun-Fat as one of the world’s greatest gamblers, who gets amnesia;  God of Gamblers II (1990), starring Stephen Chow as a gambler with super powers who teams up with the God of Gamblers’ protege (Andy...

In this Thanksgiving episode, John and Samm are running the gauntlet through three of Wong Jing’s gambling and crime films from the late ’80s: Born to Gamble (1987), yet another tale of a gambler (Natalis Chan) deceiving his prospective love interest (the divine Joyce Godenzi) to try to win her heart; Doubles Cause Troubles (1989), where two cousins (Maggie Cheung and Carol Cheng) are...

John and Samm are running the gauntlet of some of Wong Jing’s late ’80s comedy series, so you don’t have to! This episode, we’re discussing The Romancing Star trilogy (1987-1989), about a foursome trying to find love while working in an auto shop (among other places), and  The Crazy Companies (1988) double feature, where a former actor competes with his nefarious brother ov...

For this special, spooky episode of our Wong Jing series, John and Samm explore the horror comedies Wong Jing made in the late 1980s as a director, writer, and actor. We discuss films he wrote and acted in, like Lam Ngai-kai’s The Ghost Snatchers (1986), about a high rise building haunted by the ghosts of Japanese soldiers from WWII; Evil Cat (1987), about a demonic cat entity that must be d...

For Halloween season, John and Samm are taking a break from Hong Kong to visit the autumnal cemeteries and crumbling castles of France. We discuss the career of French fantastique director Jean Rollin, broadly covering his vampire films and key tropes before plunging into his work as a director of soft and hardcore sex films. Rollin was often forced to take on these kinds of work for hire projects...

Our Wong Jing series continues with a discussion of the last films he made for Shaw Brothers as a director, a blend of comedy, action, and fantasy. This includes: Wits of the Brats (1984), co-directed by Alexander Fu Sheng, about a spoiled brat who wants to become a martial arts master; I Love Lolanto (1984), where Natalis Chan’s reign of terror lives on in this romantic comedy about how he crosse...

We’re back for part two of our Wong Jing series, this time exploring the early romantic comedies Jing directed… so you don’t have to. Our discussion begins with Hong Kong Playboys (1983), where the wonderful Alexander Fu Sheng stars as a wealthy playboy whose mother has decided it’s time for him to get married. We also discuss Prince Charming (1984), a riff on The Prince an...

Samm and John are about to embark on a long series covering the first few decades of the career of a Hong Kong legend: Wong Jing. Producer, director, writer, actor, and professional hater, Jing helped shape Hong Kong cinema in the ’80s and ’90s. In this first episode in the series, we’re diving in to his early work as a screenwriter on martial arts classics like Magnificent Butch...

Perverse Permission is back with the second part of Samm and John’s discussion of Japanese pink films and the Angel Guts seres, based on Takashi Ishii’s manga of the same name. The first episode covered the first four films in the series and this continues with Angel Guts: Red Vertigo (1988) and Angel Guts: Red Flash (1994), both directed by Ishii himself, and two unofficial though no less incredi...

For the inaugural episode of Perverse Permission, Samm and John are diving right into the deep end of Japanese pink films. This is the first of a two-part episode exploring the legendary Angel Guts series based on Takashi Ishii’s manga of the same time. All the films loosely follow a woman called Nami and various iterations of her tortured relationship with a man named Muraki. These visually...