Live from Fantasia : Taiwan Black Movies & Lady Avenger

TBM strives to drag the black movie, with it’s strong emphasis on explicit violence, soft core (by Taiwanese standards) erotica and topical issues of the day kicking and screaming out of obscurity. The doc uses time worn footage and interviews with directors, actors and critics from the period to espouse it’s merits. The main drawback for anyone unfamiliar with the Taiwanese film industry is that while there is plenty of discussion about the significance, impact and political climate of this moment in time, there is little discussion about the ‘bookends’- what happened before and after to put things in perspective.

The film screened together with the 1981 black movie Lady Avenger, one of the doc’s main sources of inspiration. A tale of rape & revenge in the spirit of earlier genre films such as I Spit on Your Grave, Lady Avenger deals with the psychological toll and social stigma of rape before diving headlong into retributive mayhem.