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Poor Michael Powell. One of the most influential British directors of all time—cited as a big inspiration by the likes of Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola—releases his most daring film, and the controversy was so intense that it virtually ended his career at the time. Meanwhile, Alfred Hitchcock released a movie with a similar subject matter only three months later and became such a hit that it's now considered one of the greatest horror movies of all time. That movie was Psycho, and you know what? It has nothing on Peeping Tom.

In 1990, a British television channel thought it would be a great idea to parody the typical spousal sitcoms like I Love Lucy with Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun. They live next door to an annoying Jewish couple, the wife of which Braun gossips with but the husband a mortal enemy of Hitler’s. Not surprisingly, they received complaints after only one episode and the series was yanked off the air immediately; ironic given its gimmick premise of being a "lost" 50's American sitcom unearthed from a Burbank backlot.

Three weeks ago, the Republic of Haiti was hit by a devastating earthquake that left the country all but leveled. The international world's response was swift and generous, but some segment of the populace inevitably pose the unmentionable question: is it worth it? For the longest time, Haiti has suffered problems ranging from illiteracy to extreme poverty to political violence. Yet they persevered somehow, as they are trying now.

So on that note, I thought it might be an appropriate time to point out a film highlighting an earlier case of Haitian perseverance, in the 2003 Jonathan Demme documentary The Agronomist.

When it comes to sex comedies, I've yet to see one that tops Sex and Zen in terms of taking sexual gags to such an absurd level. In the mid 80's to early 90's, when laughter and titillation were stirred together in America in the form of horny teens (a tradition still carried on to this day thanks to the undying American Pie franchise), Hong Kong had a booming industry mixing softcore eroticism and wuxia in a light, jesting fashion. Sex and Zen, now a cult hit in all the right circles, is one of the more famous and enduring ones—deservedly so.

I came upon The Fast and the Furious by chance, while going through Roger Corman's filmography. The title obviously caught my attention. The same year Corman directed his western Five Guns West, he produced and wrote the story for this car racing flick. No doubt that these days, the title is more closely associated with Vin Diesel and his preference of American muscle cars over Japanese whaddayacallems (you can see I'm a real grease monkey). This is where that franchise got its name from.

Continuing our vampire month of Watch Out!, following Ultraviolet and Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary.

Vampyr, the only horror film made by the celebrated Danish filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer, is an example of a film only appreciated long after its release. 77 years later today, Vampyr is more accepted than it was then—when it was laughed at by critics and rejected (violently, at one point) by audiences. So severe was its failure that the director checked into a mental hospital from suffering a nervous breakdown.

If one was to have a vampire month, how can one ignore the most famous vampire story of all time? Bram Stoker’s Dracula is probably the most read horror story in history (or so I like to think), but it’s definitely the most well-known and most frequently adapted, with the character’s downfall dramatized by the likes of Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee and Gary Oldman. Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary is slightly different from the pack in that it was first an adaptation by the Royal Winnipeg Ballet—Canada’s oldest ballet company.

With The Twilight Saga: New Moon coming out in just two weeks, I thought I’d declare November “Vampire Month” for Watch Out!, as we take a look at some really great underappreciated movies involving vampires. For this first week, however, we’ll take a look at a TV show instead. It’s called Ultraviolet, and while it only lasted 6 episodes (or one season of British television), you can say that it’s quite ahead of its time.

Welcome to the absurd. The Seventh Curse is one of the most unreasonably entertaining B-movies you'll see out of Hong Kong, mainly because it’s so f--king insane. The names involved already promises a bastard of a movie; with a screenplay by low-brow legend Wong Jing (who has written and directed over 100 movies, including the God of Gamblers series and a couple of Jet Li films), and directed by Ngai Kai Lam (the director of cult favorite Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky).