ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Hong-Kong and Japanese films – the two pillars of Asian cult cinema. As scholar Jinsoo An claimed, the 1980s was also the decade in which Korean viewers became aware of foreign cult cinema through “Western ‘midnight movies’” as well as the action cinema of Hong Kong, particularly John Woo films. A core part of Asian cult cinema from Hong Kong has revolved around the films of John Woo – including The Killer, A Better Tomorrow, and Hard Boiled. The Last Dragon borrows the narrative core of many of Hye-Kyung Lee’s films: a lone protagonist who eventually teams up with other racial outsiders against oppressors for violent retribution. Along with certain Japanese New Wave and taiyozoku films, Asian cult films have arguably provided a way for the “East” to return a critical, exoticizing gaze to the West, and some of the starkest examples are its depictions of marginalized communities in the West.
