Lost and Found: Call Me

The poster for the long-forgotten 1988 erotic thriller Call Me is one of the simplest, yet most effective of its era. A telephone cord wrapped around a woman’s long, nylon-sheathed legs, with the tagline, “Her fantasies could be fatal.” That’s a poster that knows what type of film it’s advertising and does it perfectly. That … Continue reading Lost and Found: Call Me →

Lost and Found: Fear City

Since I first discovered his work with King of New York (1990), Abel Ferrara has been one of my favorite independent filmmakers. His films’ provocative style and content defined the pre-Disney New York City for me. Ferrara documented on film the city I knew from my childhood and young adulthood, the one that scared me … Continue reading Lost and Found: Fear City →

Bad Girls We Love: Mona Demarkov from Romeo is Bleeding

Some cinematic performances are so highly charged, so astonishingly assured, that we can still feel the reverberations years, even decades later. Lena Olin scorching the earth as Mona Demarkov in the excellent neo-noir classic Romeo is Bleeding (1993) is one such performance. Is Mona the most sexually uninhibited and ruthless femme fatale in movie history? … Continue reading Bad Girls We Love: Mona Demarkov from Romeo is Bleeding →

Lost and Found: Dance with Death

For the second post in this series, it feels appropriate to highlight a movie from a lost genre that has been rediscovered thanks to streaming services like Tubi or Prime. Most late-eighties, early nineties director-to-video (DTV) erotic thrillers still haven’t made the transition from VHS to DVD, let alone the current standard of Blu-ray or … Continue reading Lost and Found: Dance with Death →