Wicked City aka Yōjū Toshi (1987) - Yoshiaki Kawajiri

The Spirit of the Beehive aka El Espíritu de la Colmena (1973)

Haunting and beautiful, an oneiric portrait of the desolate and broken landscape of youth in post civil-war Spain, the Spirit of the Beehive is widely considered to be a masterpiece of Spanish cinema. On the surface the film is about the trauma of the visual; a young girl in a rural village attends a traveling film screening where she views Jame's Whale's Frankenstein and soon after begins to roam the countryside looking for the monster. Director Victor Erice masterfully crafts this incredibly lyrical film as a tribute to the seeping darkness that otherwise is known as coming to consciousness.

Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky aka Ngai Kai Lam (1991)

After killing the drug-addicted lowlife who murdered his fiancée, an unlucky strongman (Terry Fan Siu-wong) is remanded to a corrupt prison where he's forced to defend himself against inmates and tyrannical officials, spilling gallons of blood and gore along the way..., Notorious for its splattery violence and hyper-stylized melodrama, STORY OF RICKY - derived from the Japanese manga 'Riki-Oh' created by Tetsuya Saruwatari - is directed by former cinematographer Laam Naai-choi, whose earlier efforts (THE SEVENTH CURSE, EROTIC GHOST STORY, etc.) rarely scaled the same dizzy heights of outrage and audacity. 

Shot on a shoestring budget in Macao, the film combines high octane bloodshed with "Carry On"-style humor (watch out for the incredible moment when a character uses his intestines as a weapon!), mixed with visual references to earlier exploitation fare such as THE STREET FIGHTER (1974) and THE FURY (1978), though the makeup effects are rudimentary at best, in keeping with the film's comic-book tone. Japanese actress Yukari Oshima takes second billing as one of the *male* villains (she's dubbed with a masculine voice), and fan favorite Gloria Yip (SAVIOUR OF THE SOUL) plays the hero's ill-fated girlfriend in a series of corny 'feel-good' flashbacks. But the film belongs to handsome, hunky Terry Fan, ripping his shirt off at the drop of an intestine and posing impressively for the various combat sequences. Clothed or unclothed, he's never less than magnificent to behold, and director Laam uses the actor's exaggerated studliness to lampoon the homoerotic spectacle which once fuelled 'golden age' kung fu pictures. (via IMDB)

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders aka Valerie a Týden Divů (1970)

A thief awakens Valerie, just 13, taking earrings left to her by her mother. By morning, the earrings have been returned, Valerie's first period has begun, and a troupe and a missionary have arrived in her Medieval town. The thief is Orick; he reports to a cloaked constable who may also be the missionary. Attention to sexuality is everywhere: Valerie's grandmother's puritanical nature, the missionary's sermon to the town's virgins, the parish priest's attempt to seduce Valerie, and lusty adults at play. Valerie's nascent sexuality puts her in great danger. Can she navigate the passage from innocence to experience, a route teaming with vampires, a murderer, and an obscure family tree? (via IMDB)

Ghanian Hand-Painted Movie Posters

During the late 1980s, a cottage industry developed in Ghana, West Africa, called the “mobile cinema.” It was composed of young entrepreneurs who possessed three pieces of property — a TV, a videocassette recorder (known then as a VCR), and a portable, gas powered generator. Armed with these tools plus desire and ambition, they traveled from village to village showing movies on the VCR and selling tickets to the event. 

The need to attract customers gave birth to what is now recognized as a distinctive, compelling collectible — the Ghanian movie poster - an item that at first glance might appear obscure, occupying a hidden corner in the larger world of movie memorabilia. The artists who created the posters were essentially commercial illustrators who typically used oil paint to make shop signs and other forms of advertising. When it came to the canvas they used to create the posters, their own economic circumstances and resourcefulness led them to use opened-up flour sacks. Besides being cheap and readily available, this material also proved to be the perfect size for large promotional posters. These were posters destined to be rolled or folded, displayed in the sun and rain for weeks at a time, and carried from village to village. As a result, most surviving posters have gained the patina of authenticity, aging in a distressed, engaging manner. 



The resulting posters almost always present a lurid, colorful patchwork of images intended to attract, engage and entice the viewer. Sometimes the images are grotesque, violent, raw, and hardcore; at other times they are so absurd and melodramatic they become humorous, if not downright ludicrous; and at rare times they can be endearing; yet each and every time they succeed in sucking the viewer into an imaginary, surreal world which may or may not be relevant to the film. As art and advertising, they are wildly successful, and it is the combination of the two which makes Ghanian movie posters memorable, indeed unforgettable when compared to other movie memorabilia and poster art in general. (via)