Guilty Pleasure No. 105: Ramba (by Rossano Rossi & Marco Bianchini)

Posted on February 17, 2026 by Arleigh

Ramba is one of those books you probably don’t proudly display on the coffee table, but you also don’t quite forget once you’ve read it. On the surface it’s an Italian erotic comic about a hyper-sexualized hitwoman, yet under all the sweat, sleaze, and gun smoke there’s a surprisingly solid crime engine humming along, which is what makes it feel like such an unapologetic guilty pleasure.

Created by Rossano Rossi and collaborators and published in English by Eros Comix in the 1990s, Ramba follows its titular assassin—loosely inspired by Italian porn star Ramba/Ileana Carisio—as she takes on murder-for-hire jobs that inevitably twist into elaborate scenarios of sex and violence. Every assignment is essentially built on a three-part rhythm: seduction, escalation, execution. Ramba beds clients, enemies, bystanders, women, men, and sometimes even corpses, and that’s not an exaggeration; necrophilia, watersports, and a running thread of sadomasochistic games are part of the fabric here. That whirl of anything-goes content is where the series earns its notoriety, but it’s also where a lot of readers will tap out, because Ramba never pretends to be tasteful or restrained.

What keeps the book from collapsing into pure shock-for-shock’s-sake is that it does, in fact, function as a crime comic in the European erotica tradition. Rossi structures most chapters as compact revenge or hit-job dramas, the kind of tight little potboilers you might see in a hardboiled anthology if you stripped out the explicit content—or, in this case, added a lot more of it. There is an internal logic to the way jobs are set up, double-crosses emerge, and Ramba problem-solves her way out of bad situations, even as she pauses mid-escape for a quick tryst in a stairwell. That constant cross-cutting between sex and violence, between carnal excess and professional precision, gives the series a strangely propulsive energy; you may not approve of what it’s doing, but it’s rarely dull.

Still, you can’t talk about Ramba without acknowledging just how aggressively transgressive it is. The book happily checks off an entire “so wrong it’s right” playbook: everybody seems perpetually horny, gender is more a preference slider than a barrier, and taboos are treated as toys to be scattered across the floor. Ramba herself will “try anything that moves,” to borrow the fandom shorthand, and the comic keeps pushing her into situations that blur consent, pain, humiliation, and pleasure to a degree that many readers will reasonably find grotesque. Some sequences—like the infamous scene where she urinates into a dying man’s mouth and then exploits his post-mortem arousal—are deliberately pitched to provoke, and they succeed perhaps a little too well.

That blend of sex and brutality is the core ethical sticking point. The series clearly wants to critique brutality against women—Ramba cannot stand seeing other women victimized and often redirects violence back at abusers—but at the same time it eroticizes that very violence, staging assaults and torture in a way that’s unavoidably titillating for its target audience. The result is an uneasy tension: on one page, Ramba is a feminist avenger cutting down misogynists, and on the next she’s participating in a scenario that looks uncomfortably like torture porn. Whether you see this as frank, messy exploration of dark fantasies or just sleaze wrapped in a wafer-thin moral fig leaf will depend entirely on your own threshold and politics.

Visually, Ramba lands much closer to craftsmanship than throwaway smut. Artists Marco Delizia and Fabio Valdambrini give the series a sharply observed, high-contrast look that elevates it beyond bargain-bin erotica. Delizia’s pages are dense with black ink, detailed anatomy, and an almost fetishistic focus on physical textures—leather, sweat, shadowed skin—which reinforces the grittier, urban crime vibe. Valdambrini, by contrast, leans into an older adventure-strip style with looser figures and more traditional shading, evoking 1940s newspaper serials updated with NC-17 sensibilities. That stylistic tug-of-war, between pulp sophistication and outright porn, mirrors the writing: the art insists on giving this material a veneer of legitimacy even when the content is at its most extreme.

Narratively, the book occasionally steps outside its grounded crime lane into fully pulp territory, dabbling in supernatural elements such as a black magic coven and demons in stories like “Vendetta From Hell.” These arcs introduce “hunting humans as sport” riffs and occult enemies that feel, frankly, like a different series wandered in from the next shelf over. On one hand, they add variety and show Ramba operating in wildly different contexts; on the other, they dilute the gritty hitwoman angle that is easily the comic’s strongest hook. When Ramba stays focused on mob bosses, crooked cops, and revenge killings, it feels like a filthy cousin to Euro-crime cinema; when it veers into demon-summoning cults, it plays more like an anything-goes anthology that happened to keep the same lead character.

For all the shock value, there is a certain honesty to how Ramba approaches sexual fantasy. It doesn’t posture as an art-house deconstruction or wrap its extremes in academic language; it stands there, naked and grinning, saying: this is what some people fantasize about when no one is looking. That directness can be disarming. You get the sense the creators understand that erotic fantasy often lives in a space that’s not meant to be aspirational or “healthy,” and they lean into that forbidden-zone appeal. If you’ve ever rolled your eyes at glossy, sanitized “sexy” comics that pretend to be above the id, Ramba feels like the brazen counterargument, all id with just enough structure to hold it together.

Of course, that’s also what makes it so specifically a guilty pleasure, even for readers who might be predisposed to like transgressive material. It is possible to admire the storytelling economy, the craftsmanship of the art, and the boldness of its content while simultaneously feeling that some sequences cross into outright mean-spirited nastiness. The books have been praised in some circles as a kind of high watermark of explicit sex comics in English—highly competent, unabashedly filthy, and influential in their niche—but that gold comes smudged with plenty of grime. If you’re not prepared to wade through the muck, you’re better off steering clear.

Ultimately, Ramba is best approached with clear eyes and a strong stomach. If you’re curious about the boundaries of 1990s European-style erotic comics, the series offers a vivid snapshot of what could be done when an imprint like Eros Comix let creators run wild, combining solid noir plotting with maximalist sexual excess. It’s exploitative, sometimes disturbingly so, but it’s also more thoughtfully constructed and visually ambitious than its lurid premise suggests. For some, it will be a hard pass; for others, it will sit firmly in that private, slightly embarrassing corner of the collection where guilty pleasures live, dusted off once in a while with a mix of discomfort and undeniable fascination.

Previous Guilty Pleasures

Artwork of the Day: Mardi Gras Walker

Posted on February 17, 2026 by Dazzling Erin

by Erin Nicole

This was taken at a Dallas Mardi Gras celebration in 2018. As you can tell, our Mardi Gras party is not as much fun as the one in New Orleans.

Retro Television Review: Miami Vice 5.15 “Over The Line”

Posted on February 16, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Mondays, I will be reviewing Miami Vice, which ran on NBC from 1984 to 1989. The entire show can be purchased on Prime!

This week, the Vice Squad learns that a man has to know his limitations.

Episode 5.15 “Over The Line”

(Dir by Russ Mayberry, originally aired on April 28th, 1989)

“All of our heroes are dead.”

That line was delivered in 1973’s Magnum Force, by a motorcycle cop-turned-vigilante who justified his murderous actions by claiming that he was a part of the first generation without heroes. That line could have just as easily been delivered by the cops in this episode of Miami Vice.

Crockett and Tubbs are recruited by Walter Stevens (Thomas Arana), a cop-turned-vigilante who explains to them that, once they join his organization, they can never leave. Of course, Crockett and Tubbs are only pretending to be vigilantes so that they can take down both the drug dealers and Walter’s organization. They do this despite the fact that, in many ways, Crockett agrees with Walter. But when Walter’s methods lead to three good cops getting killed, Crockett realizes that Walter has to be stopped. Even worse, he discovers that Walter is funding his operation by selling the cocaine that he confiscates from the dealers.

When Crockett pulls his gun on Walter and tells him to surrender, Walter appears to be doing so. Walter warns Crockett that there’s a lot more to the organization than Crockett realizes. Suddenly, a police captain named Robert Highsmith (Robert Fields) pops up and shoots Walter. Crockett says that Walter was surrendering. Highsmith insists that he saved Crockett’s life.

With the drug dealers and the bad cops taken down, Highsmith takes all the credit. Highsmith is not only a police captain but he’s also a candidate for Dade County Supervisor. At a televised “meet-the-candidate” forum, Highsmith brags about how he personally is helping to clean up the city. Crockett watches and says, “Whatever it takes, right?”

Agck!

Seriously, this episode is cynical even by the standards of Miami Vice. Legitimate cops like Crockett and Tubbs can’t do their job because of budget cuts. The vigilante cops are taking down the drug dealers but they’re also stealing and selling cocaine so they’re not actually doing anything to stop the flow of drugs into Miami. Walter becomes the first Miami Vice bad guy to both show remorse and to willingly surrender but he’s still gunned down by Captain Highsmith who, at the end of the episode, appears poised to be elected to political office. Miami Vice was often critical of the War on Drugs. This episode showed why the war couldn’t be won, despite the best efforts of soldiers like Crockett, Tubbs, and Castillo. Men like Highsmith had to appear to be winning the war so that they could accumulate more power but if they actually did win the war, they would no longer be given carte blanche to do whatever they wanted.

This was a dark but effective episode. Crockett’s hair has never been longer and he’s never appeared more defeated.

Anime You Should Be Watching: Record Of Lodoss War (Rōdosu-tō Senki)

Posted on February 16, 2026 by Arleigh

“I don’t understand you humans at all. But then, maybe that’s what makes you so fascinating!” — Deedlit

Record of Lodoss War is one of those series that feels less like a single anime and more like a crystallized moment in the evolution of fantasy storytelling in Japan: ambitious, clunky, oddly moving, and unmistakably rooted in tabletop role-playing DNA. It is also a work that shows its age in both craft and politics, which makes revisiting it today a fascinating mix of admiration and frustration.

Set on the war-torn island of Lodoss, the story follows Parn, the disgraced knight’s son who sets out to restore his family’s honor, gathering around him the quintessential fantasy party: Etoh the priest, Slayn the mage, Ghim the dwarf, Deedlit the high elf, and Woodchuck the thief. On paper, this is pure campaign log: goblin attacks, dragon encounters, cursed relics, warring kingdoms, and an encroaching darkness embodied by Marmo and its champions, all framed as a grand war for the fate of the land. What makes Record of Lodoss War interesting is how openly it wears that structure; it rarely tries to hide its tabletop origins, and that transparency becomes both a charm and a structural limitation.

The narrative in the original OVA moves briskly to the point of feeling compressed, jumping between key battles, political shifts, and character revelations with very little connective tissue. Characters appear, declare their motivations, and are folded into the party or into the enemy ranks as though someone summarized last week’s game session before tonight’s adventure. That can be engaging—there’s a constant sense that something important is happening—but it also means emotional beats often rely on the audience’s familiarity with genre shorthand rather than carefully built arcs. The later TV series, Record of Lodoss War: Chronicles of the Heroic Knight, attempts to extend and reframe this story, moving the timeline forward and giving more room to Ashram and the continuing conflicts around the scepter of domination, but it still largely lives in that same campaign-style rhythm.

If you come to Record of Lodoss War for worldbuilding, it mostly delivers. Lodoss feels like a fully mapped fantasy setting, complete with divine factions, ancient wars, feuding human kingdoms, and a clear sense of geopolitical stakes. The franchise’s origins in novels and game material mean that offhanded references to past conflicts or legendary heroes feel like the tip of a much larger iceberg rather than improvisations thrown in on the spot. That sense of a lived-in world is one of the show’s enduring strengths, and it’s not hard to see why it earned “anime Lord of the Rings” comparisons for some viewers. At the same time, the story’s focus is surprisingly narrow in practice; we spend most of our time tracking a small cluster of heroes and villains, which can make the world feel oddly claustrophobic despite its epic framing.

Parn is a divisive protagonist, and your tolerance for him may shape how much you enjoy the series. He’s deliberately written as inexperienced and impulsive, a young man who rushes headlong into danger and has to be humbled, trained, and repeatedly corrected by those around him. That arc tracks the classic “wannabe hero becomes real knight” trajectory, and there is a certain sincerity to his straightforward commitment to honor that feels very of its era. On the other hand, his lack of nuance and his tendency to charge spellcasters as if basic tactics don’t exist can make him feel more like an archetype than a fully realized character, especially to modern viewers used to more subversive leads. The series wants you to root for Parn because he is earnest and good-hearted, and if you can accept that at face value, his journey has an old-school charm; if you can’t, he may come off as frustratingly bland.

The supporting cast generally fares better and often carries the emotional weight of the story. Ghim’s quest to free Leylia from the control of the enigmatic Grey Witch Karla has a tragic nobility that gives him more emotional complexity than his gruff dwarf stereotype suggests. Deedlit, meanwhile, is both a clear audience favorite and a bundle of contradictions: proud high elf, jealous love interest, powerful magic user, and emotional anchor for Parn’s growth. There are interesting dynamics scattered throughout—Karla’s manipulative neutrality, Ashram’s stern loyalty, and King Kashue’s charismatic leadership—but the limited runtime and brisk pacing mean that many of these threads feel more sketched than deeply explored. Still, the show does succeed in one key area: it communicates that no one is entirely safe, and deaths and sacrifices land with more impact because the narrative doesn’t treat the core party as invincible.

From a visual standpoint, Record of Lodoss War is a time capsule of late-80s and early-90s OVA aesthetics, complete with lush fantasy backgrounds, detailed armor designs, and occasional bursts of impressive sakuga. Dragons, enchanted forests, and battlefield panoramas often look fantastic, and when the animation budget aligns with central set-pieces, the result can still be striking. That said, the budget limitations are impossible to ignore: reused shots, still frames, and noticeably uneven animation quality crop up often enough to break immersion, especially during less critical scenes. The contrast between its best sequences and its weaker cuts is stark, and modern viewers accustomed to consistently polished fantasy action may find the inconsistency distracting.

Tonally, the series is earnest to the point of feeling almost old-fashioned now. Its focus on honor, duty, and chivalric ideals is straightforward and rarely interrogated, creating a cast of characters who largely operate within established moral frameworks rather than questioning them. That gives the story a kind of mythic simplicity—good kings, cursed knights, devoted priests—that can be comforting in the way classic fantasy often is. But it also means that viewers looking for moral ambiguity, systemic critique, or characters who challenge the underlying social order of their world may find Record of Lodoss War thematically limited. Some of its perspectives, especially regarding gender roles and heroic archetypes, feel antiquated when held up against contemporary fantasy anime that deliberately complicate or deconstruct those tropes.

One of the highlights of the anime series is its orchestral soundtrack composed by Mitsuo Hagita. Symphonic tracks underscore the grander battles with sweeping majesty, while softer themes highlight moments of connection between Parn and Deedlit or the quieter interludes between campaigns. The overall effect is to push the story closer to high fantasy melodrama, which suits the material perfectly; when the writing and visuals are in sync with Hagita’s score, you can see exactly why this anime lodged itself so firmly in fans’ memories. Voice performances, in both Japanese and English dubs, tend to lean into archetype—stoic knights, booming kings, mysterious witches—but that broadness pairs naturally with the show’s narrative style.

A fair assessment of Record of Lodoss War has to acknowledge its historical importance alongside its genuine flaws. It stands as a significant waypoint for fantasy anime, showing that a series could aim for a sweeping, quasi-novelistic epic with detailed lore and long-running political conflict. Many later works, from more grounded fantasy to meta-takes on RPG structures, benefit indirectly from the groundwork Lodoss and its peers laid in translating tabletop sensibilities to the screen. At the same time, its uneven pacing, underdeveloped character arcs, inconsistent animation, and sometimes simplistic moral framing keep it from feeling timeless in the way its influences clearly aspired to be.

Whether Record of Lodoss War is worth watching now depends heavily on what you’re looking for. If you have a soft spot for classic fantasy, tabletop RPG roots, or the particular look and feel of 90s OVAs, the series offers a rewarding, if imperfect, journey through a world that still feels distinct and carefully built. If you prioritize tight plotting, modern character complexity, or consistent visual polish, Lodoss may feel more like an important relic than a compelling contemporary experience. Taken on its own terms—as an earnest, sometimes clumsy, but heartfelt attempt to stage a sprawling heroic saga—it remains a notable, if not unassailable, part of anime history.

Robert Duvall, RIP

Posted on February 16, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Salud, you glorious actor.

I knew this day was going to come because he was only 5 years away from 100 but still, it breaks my heart.

Rest in peace, Robert Duvall.

In my opinion, Robert Duvall was the best of American actors to come to prominence during the 60s and 70s, someone who was consistently great, who could move you to tears or make you laugh, someone who was just as good at being a villain as he was at being a hero. It’s hard not to think of a single movie that was not improved by the presence of Robert Duvall.

He was the original Boo Radley and, though he was only in To Kill A Mockingbird for a few minutes, his performance was unforgettable. He captured both the shyness and the compassion of an outcast with a good heart.

In M*A*S*H, he was Major Frank Burns, the dangerously incompetent doctor who drove Bud Cort to tears, got punched out be Elliott Gould, and eventually tried to kill Donald Sutherland. Burns was the perfect villain and Duvall wisely didn’t play the role for laughs.

In the original Godfather novel, Tom Hagen was described as being bland and colorless. In the films, Duvall transformed him into one of the most vibrant characters in the entire saga. During the first film, when he asks Michael “why am I out?,” he breaks your heart. When Michael snaps at him in the sequel, you realize that Michael is losing the one person who still cares about him. His absence in Godfather Part III is so deeply felt that it makes you realize that Robert Duvall was just as important to the saga as Pacino, Caan, Brando, and the rest.

(Robert Duvall had previously worked with Brando in The Chase and, on the set of The Godfather, he was one of the few actors who could call Marlon out. Once, when Marlon was holding up filming with a hundred nit-picky questions, Duvall said, “Don’t worry, Marlon, we don’t have anywhere to be either.” Marlon laughed and shot the scene.)

In Apocalypse Now, Duvall delivery of one line — “I love the smell of napalm in the morning,” — summed up everything that the film had to say about war.

In Tender Mercies, he gave one of the most honest performances that I’ve ever seen and he won a deserved Oscar. Tender Mercies is one of the great Texas films and that’s largely due to Robert Duvall.

In the miniseries Lonesome Dove, he made you laugh, he made you cry, he made you believe that he had stepped out of the Old West, and he made it all look easy.

With The Apostle, he proved himself to be as strong a director as an actor. He crafted one of the best American films about religion to come out in the 90s and he gave a fearless performance that should have won him a second Oscar.

Even in a seriously flawed film like The Judge, he could hold your attention like few other actors.

Robert Duvall was born in California, raised in Maryland, and began his career in New York and yet somehow, he was one of the most authentic Southerners that I’ve ever seen on screen. Down in my part of the world, we considered him to be something of an honorary Texan. By most reports, he had the fiercely independent but generous spirit that defines the best of the Southwest. When he was a struggling actor, his roommates were Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman. His best friend was James Caan. He knew and worked with the best actors and directors of the past 60 years.

He was a truly one of the greats. He may be gone but his performances will live forever.

Join #MondayMania For The Cheating Pact!

Posted on February 16, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Hi, everyone! Tonight, on twitter, I will be hosting one of my favorite films for #MondayMania! Join us for 2013’s The Cheating Pact!

You can find the movie on Prime and Tubi and then you can join us on twitter at 9 pm central time! (That’s 10 pm for you folks on the East Coast.) See you then!

Scenes That I Love: President Merkin Muffley in Dr. Strangelove

Posted on February 16, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Since today is Presidents Day, my scene that I love features one of my favorite fictional presidents! In this scene from 1964’s Dr. Strangelove, President Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers) attempts to explain why something funny might happen with the bomb to his Russian counterpart.

Sellers reportedly based President Muffley on Adlai Stevenson, the self-styled “rational intellectual” who twice ran for President against Dwight Eisenhower.

Ah, Eisenhower. There’s a President that I wish I could have voted for.

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special John Schlesinger Edition

Posted on February 16, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!

Today would have been the birthday of director John Schlesinger. It’s time for….

4 Shots From 4 John Schlesinger Films

Darling (1965, dir by John Schlesinger, DP: Kenneth Higgins)

Far From The Madding Crowd (1967, dir by John Schlesinger, DP: Nicolas Roeg)

Midnight Cowboy (1969, dir by John Schlesinger, DP: Adam Holender)

Marathon Man (1976, dir by John Schlesinger, DP: Conrad Hall)

Monday Live Tweet Alert: Join Us for Programmed To Kill!

Posted on February 16, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in hosting a few weekly live tweets on twitter and occasion ally Mastodon. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of Mastodon’s #MondayActionMovie ! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We snark our way through it.

Tonight, for #MondayActionMovie, the film will be 1987’s Programmed To Kill!

It should make for a night of fun viewing and I invite all of you to join in. If you want to join the live tweets, just hop onto Mastodon, pull up Programmed To Kill on YouTube, start the movie at 8 pm et, and use the #MondayActionMovie hashtag!

Enjoy!