Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright in the Forests of the Night: Wolf Guy

Synopsis: Inugami Akira (“Sonny” Chiba Shin’ichi) is a tough guy journalist haunted by a past tragedy and a family link to the supernatural. An invisible but lethal force is tearing gang thugs apart. It is somehow tied to Miki (Nami Etsuko), a singer who once fell in love with the wrong man and was cruelly […]

Things Are Already in Motion: Stephen Graham Jones’ The Coming of Night

The final novella in the Three Miles Past collection is an unusual exercise. According to the Author’s Notes, it started as just that, an exercise Jones devised was teaching a writing class. He decided to show the nuts and bolts of writing a story by writing a story under glass—this is similar to the days […]

Man of Action (Pig of Scene Stealing): Doberman Cop

Synopsis: A murderer is on the loose, killing sex workers and then setting their bodies on fire. The Tokyo police are running around like headless chickens in their efforts to nab the crazy bastard. They have little to no time for Kano Joji (“Sonny” Chiba Shin’ichi), a yokel cop from Okinawa who has come to […]

That Feeling Somebody Is Behind You, Just Kind of Lurking: Stephen Graham Jones’ No Takebacks

By the time kids reach their teenage years, they seldom like their parents. Love can still be there. Like? Not so much. This is understandable because they’ve been stuck in proximity, they’ve been disciplined or in the very least told what they are and are not allowed to do. For those young folks ready to […]

Move Back, Creatures of the Devil: Cemetery of Terror

Synopsis: A group of young dudes who would not look out of place in a slasher flick decide to con their girlfriends into visiting an abandoned and decrepit house (not far from a cemetery) on Halloween night by tricking them into thinking they are attending a big, jet setter party. What they find, amidst the […]

All About Her Families: Sister Street Fighter: Fifth Level Fist

Synopsis: Although her family would like to see her married to a prominent man, Nakakawa Kiku (Shihomi Etsuko) is happy to continue training her martial arts students in the art of taking on a dozen opponents single-handedly. This causes her kimono-selling father Takeo (Suzuki Masafumi) and mother no end of frustration, but it makes her […]

Life (and Death) On the Road: Stephen Graham Jones’ Interstate Love Song

In 2013, Nightscape Press released the book Three Miles Past, collecting three of Stephen Graham Jones’s original novella length works, Interstate Love Song, No Takebacks, and The Coming of Night. As I did for Stephen Volk’s Dark Master’s trilogy (Whitstable, Leytonstone, and Netherwood), I will be taking a gander at the three long fiction works […]

Snakes in the Grass and Solid Gold Punches: Return of the Sister Street Fighter

Synopsis: When a Hong Kong detective tries to pass on some intelligence about a Japanese crime group who has taken beautiful chemist Shurei (Kawasaki Akane) to plucky, hero Li Koryu (Shihomi Etsuko), some badass thugs give him a knife for his troubles. A deathbed promise lands Koryu the responsibility of finding the missing woman and […]

I Won’t Ever Let You Go: Tei’ichi Hirai’s Midnight Encounters

Before his disappearance, Kazama Naoki was a scholar fascinated with the historical records kept in the Aso house, an old family dwelling in Hogisaku Village, Niigata prefecture, the mountainous northern “snow country” of mainland Japan. There he had some unusual encounters, which he wrote about before disappearing. Following his disappearance (presumed death), those mysterious memoirs […]

You’re Too Beautiful to Die: Necromancer

Synopsis: Julie (Elizabeth Cayton) never expected to get chased through the halls of a college campus after encountering a trio of bad guys caught after sneaking a peek at some prof’s test. When they catch her, the butterfly knife twirling leader Paul DuShayne (Stan Hurwitz) is not content to simply scare her; he sexually assaults […]

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Month: November 2020