Works featuring "action" (68)
Featured image for The Man Who Knew Too Much [1934]

The Man Who Knew Too Much [1934]

More accrurately titled, "The Man Who Knew Too Much And Told His Wife - Who Then Also Knew Too Much - And Also A Family Friend, Who Nonetheless Didn't Seem To Know Too Much Because No One Took Him Seriously". Even with the abbreviated title, it's still a rather silly movie, like a self-parody: kidnapping and repeated threats of child murder played for laughs. Each possibility for tension or suspense is lost to wisecracks or quips. Of course Peter Lorre's performance rises above the trite banter, with that smile that sends shivers down the spine.

Featured image for Woman With Knife (夜夜磨刀的女人)

Woman With Knife (夜夜磨刀的女人)

An innocent rickshaw/jinrikisha driver becomes the main suspect when a businessman is murdered in the rickshaw ride. When the driver's wife becomes a victim of the real killer's lechery, she becomes the title's Woman With Knife. Is this Taiwan under Japanese rule, or Taiwan's White Terror?

Better than the low video quality suggests! Dark, with subtitles cropped. And it needed more editing: seemed a bit too long (how many times did we need to hear the grieving couple, Wen-Shan and Chiou Hua, cry to each other: 'Wen-Shan!', 'Chiou Hua!'...'Wen-Shan!', 'Chiou Hua!', etc?). Soundtrack sounded like a mashup of Hitchcock films, but it was done well so it worked.

But most intriguing were the costumes. Titles place the events in 1940, yet while most costumes were not modern, police and villain all wore late 70s suits and hairstyles! This was particularly striking during torture scene. Was this simply low-budget cost-cutting on costumes, or could this have been a way to slip a portrayal of 1970s martial law era brutality and corruption past the censors?