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- 19:54 Why do people care about Steve Jobs' liver?
Sunday, June 21, 2009
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Saturday, June 20, 2009
Assault! Jack the Ripper (1976)
On a rainy night, a lowly pastry cook (Yutaka Hayashi) lets himself get talked into driving a waitress imbued with a certain sukeban charm (Tamaki Katsura) who works at the same cafe as he does home. On the road, they pick up a strange woman dressed in something that looks like a hospital gown. Sitting on the backseat, she soon starts to cut herself with a knife and razorblades. Our nameless protagonists throw her out, accidentally killing her in the process.
Sukeban Gal convinces Cook - not that it does take much convincing, mind you - that it would be best to hide the body on a deserted junkyard instead of going to the police. Afterwards, they feel inspired to an enthusiastic bit of sex.
While he tries to avoid her the next day, she thinks that their shared experience is the perfect basis for a relationship. It's just too bad that he has performance problems if he has not been freshly aroused by a murder. What to do? Oh, yes, let's kill another woman. And then another, and another.
She thinks they are a perfect couple, and starts to act out her view of a perfect relationship, just with added murders, with him. What the poor girl doesn't comprehend is that her beloved (and it is love on her side, not much doubt about it) killer doesn't really need her anymore, now that she has provided his trigger. The act of killing has fast become much more important than the sex afterwards for him, it is in fact sex for him, and soon he starts to go out and kill on his own, getting more reckless with each murder.
Yasuharu Hasebe was one of the handful of Nikkatsu Studio's directors who stayed on after the Nikkatsu action phase had run its course and the studio invented the Roman Porn(o) film. His contributions to the latter genre like Assault! are all not very interested in being erotic, instead portraying emotionless psychopaths without much explanation of their backgrounds or histories.
This does not mean that Hasebe is completely disinterested in his protagonists' psychology - he just prefers to show us the last phase of a sexual psychopath's development, the motive behind his actions not exposited, but acted out, explained by the way he stabs his victims with a knife he likes to keep close to his crotch.
Hasebe shows the murders and the sex in such a clinical way that you'll probably have to be a sexual psychopath yourself to find much excitement or enjoyment here. Often, the film feels like a documentary gone horribly wrong, filmed by someone whose lack of compassion is equal to that of his protagonist.
It's all decidedly unpleasant to watch - as well it should be - yet Assault! is also something of a very black, very deadpan comedy, taking cynical shots at concepts like "the normal relationship" or a "healthy sex-life" in a way I found at once rather endearing and discomfiting.
What differentiates this from comparable American movies of the same era and unfriendly disposition is (apart from the lack of backstory that trusts the film's viewer to understand without being told) a budget and a technical professionalism most American indies could only dream of. This does of course lead to a certain lack of rawness in Hasebe's film, but the Japanese uses the contrast between the things he shows and the way they look to ironic effect. There's really not much that compares to a lovingly framed shot of a man stabbing a woman in the (carefully kept hidden by objects in the foreground) abdomen while 70s porno "da-ba-da-ba-da" music plays. Sure, a modern film would show us the whole act in loving close-ups, but that's not something I feel much of a need to see.
As accomplished and clever as it is, I still find it hard to actually recommend Assault!. It does what it sets out to do (leave the viewer squirming) excellently, but you have to be in a very special mood to appreciate it.
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- 19:47 Everyone killed off by Nyarlathotep. Oops.
- 00:00 I shall not watch The Collingswood Story at night again. I still am a scaredy-cat at heart.
Friday, June 19, 2009
In short: Nightbeast (1982)
When a drunk (or so I suppose) alien's UFO hits a meteorite, it crashes down in the woods of Maryland, as we know an area all too often plagued by alien invaders. The beastie doesn't want to stay in the shadow of the heroes of The Alien Factor and starts to kill the rural population left and right with its raygun, often vaporizing its victims in a shower of glitter. Well, what would you expect from a creature dressed in a silvery outfit that late period Elvis would have called tasteless?
But even after the intrepid defenders of Maryland under awesome white guy afro owner Sheriff Cinder (Tom Griffith) and bra-hating lady deputy (not my phrase) Lisa (Karin Kardian) manage to disarm the rude visitor, it still insists on killing, if now somewhat more gorily.
Besides a rampaging alien, the poor Sheriff also has to cope with Bertie-the-alcoholic-mayor's (yes, I'm pretty sure that's his name, and he's played by Richard Dyszel) unwillingness to ask for outside help or cancel the party for the state governor he is holding during the alien attack and the lone evil biker (Don Leifert) of the area. It's enough to make one want to have a romantic sub-plot with one's (still bra-less) deputy.
Not much new in Don Dohler's Baltimore here, although our dear old-fashioned director was aiming for a little more of that timely (alas, as of 1970) exploitation feeling. This means the addition of a certain amount of rubbery gore Herschell Gordon Lewis would probably have derided as too crudely done and even (gasp!) the appearance of naked lady deputy breasts in one of the funnier sex scenes ever shot in Maryland (including some mean mustache rubbed all over female face moves), as well as what probably went for depravity in Dohler's circles (alcohol! leather jackets!).
The rest of the film is very much like everything else Dohler has done - the acting is atrocious but funny (I dare you to find many other films in which not a single line of dialogue sounds natural), the fashion makes one want to gouge one's eyes out, and Dohler's direction is stiff but oddly charming in its stubborn insistence on copying each and every fault of the classic monster movies as filtered through a strictly provincial lens. The hairless space ape looks quite great though, or rather its head does - the rest of it is mostly hidden beneath the space disco outfit that fits Sheriff Cinder's haircut perfectly.
I don't want to sound too negative about Nightbeast. There's a certain - probably wrong-headed - enthusiasm about it, as if the people behind the cameras were shouting "Look Ma, we're making a movie!", and I for one find it difficult too argue with that.
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Thursday, June 18, 2009
The Spider Labyrinth (1988)
Professor Alan Whitmore (Roland Wybenga) is the American coordinator of a large international archaeological project with the goal of combining the international research efforts regarding an occult group of gods that were seemingly worshipped in otherwise culturally unrelated parts of the world.
All participiants of the project have already reported their findings to Whitmore, only Professor Ross in Budapest hasn't been heard from for some time. Whitmore's bosses send him to Budapest, all the while insinuating that their project might be much more important and dangerous than the Professor himself believes. This being an Italian movie, Whitmore more or less shrugs and packs his bags instead of asking what the hell they are talking about.
In Budapest he is greeted by Ross' assistant Genevieve (Paola Rinaldi), leaving the viewer puzzled about how incommunicado Ross really is, a question Whitmore seems too distracted by staring at the poor woman's legs to ask. At least Ross is at home, even if his wife (Margareta von Krauss, I believe) explains to Whitmore that her husband isn't in a state to do much work.
Ross acts quite paranoid. He seems convinced that someone (or something) is after him and doesn't even trust his wife. In an unobserved moment, the older man slips Whitmore a notebook and two fotos of a strange tablet, only to just disappear into thin air after someone throws a brown orb through a window. Whitmore decides to return later in the evening.
Genevieve already awaits him outside, eager to show him his hotel, and even more eager to tell him that its directly opposite of the house she lives in. Why, he could even be able to see through her window! The hotel is a weird place. It's run by Mrs. Kuhn (Stephane Audran), a middle-aged woman just a little too interested in Whitmore. Everyone else there can't stop staring at the scientist, too, although our hero seems quite oblivious to it.
After a little notebook studying and a look at Genevieve flashing her breasts through her window at him, the Professor decides to return to Ross' places, only to be apprehended by a mysterious man (William Berger). As is the duty of mysterious men prowling dark streets, he warns Whitmore of some undefined, yet terrible danger that awaits him, and urges the American to get away quickly. Whitmore doesn't listen, of course, and finds Ross' abode surrounded by police.
Ross has been murdered and is now hanging from the ceiling of his room bound with something that looks very much like cobweb. It's all made even more mysterious by the fact that the woman Whitmore believed to be Ross' wife is nowhere to be found. Worse, Genevieve doesn't know of anyone living with the old man. The inspector in charge doesn't really suspect Whitmore, but still takes his passport away and "asks" him to stay in the country a little longer.
This is just the beginning of the strangeness the scientist has stumbled into. Soon everyone who is trying to help him or warn him is murdered by an Italian horror film witch (heavy metal edition) with arachnid tendencies and Whitmore finds himself in the possession of a tablet containing the names of the Gods of a hidden cult of people who have become something not completely human. This cult is still very active today and its members will do anything in their not inconsiderable power to prevent these names from being known.
For Whitmore himself, they have worse plans.
1988 wasn't a great year for the type of occult horror The Spider Labyrinth deals in. In fact, the end of the 80s wasn't a good period for Italian horror at all, so finding a solid film like this, made by an unknown like Gianfranco Giagni, is a minor sensation for the fan of Italian genre films.
And an Italian genre film it is, probably very much inspired by Argento's supernatural films, and full of the things that drive the detractors of this part of the horror genre just nuts. For example, there's the typically cool, slightly artificial acting, the even more artificial sounding dub and the film's disinterest in being part of the kingdom of linear logic. The latter I do see as a strength in a film that is very much about someone leaving the rational world and discovering that the universe is mad, dark and chaotic. The film is even subtly Lovecraftian, with its insinuation of dark gods who are worshipped by hidden cults all over the world, and Mrs. Kuhn's explanation to Whitmore that there is no light to worship, but only darkness (and spiders and their webs).
The film also has some genuinely original ideas, especially in the way the cult members are changed.
If a viewer is willing to go with it, Giagni's film is really quite something, starting out slowly and innocently, but building up to one of Silvio Stivaletti's most freakish monster designs when Whitmore finally meets one of the gods. On the way, Giagni makes extremely good use of the cobweb and labyrinth metaphors, driving Whitmore in circles towards a center he probably would prefer not to find.
More problematic than the film's pace or its inclination towards the nonsensical are some problems you should probably blame on the director's inexperience. Giagni has obviously decided to use some of the stylistic elements typical for Argento or Mario Bava, but his use of colour and his lighting technique look rather heavy-handed compared to the work of his models or even of someone like Michele Soavi. The heavy metal witch also looks a little too silly to be shown this often and is rather bad for the dark mood the film strives for.
Of course, not being as good as the best films of Dario Argento or Mario Bava is more a luxury than a true problem for a film to have, and The Spider Labyrinth still is a very fine piece of cinema, as good a film as Italian directors were able to produce at the time.
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- 18:54 Not a Bride of Frankenstein remake, please!
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
In short: 4bia (2008)
consists of four, not meaningfully interconnected stories.
"Happiness" by Youngyooth Thongkonthun depicts the misadventures of a young woman sitting lonely at home with a broken leg. A chance text message by a seemingly nice stranger raises her hopes of an end to her loneliness, but after a while the young man's texting takes on a rather disquieting note. Is it possible that she is talking to a ghost?
"Tit for Tat" by Paween Purikitpanya sees a gang of weed-smoking hoodlums taken directly from Reefer Madness cursed by one of their victims and killed in Final Destination light-like accidents.
"In the Middle" by Shutter & Alone directors Parkpoom Wongpoom and Banjong Pisanthanakun follows a quartet of young men with a tendency to wink-wink, nudge-nudge towards Shutter out on a rafting tour in the jungle. Thanks to the added IQs of everyone involved still staying in the double-digits area, one of them drowns, only to come back the following night to haunt his friends. Or is it all a little more complicated?
"Last Fright" - as far as I can make out directed by Wongpoom alone - portraits the fun a flight attendant gets into when she has to accompany the transport of the body of a foreign royal for whose death she is at least partially responsible and whose husband is her lover. The dead person is not amused.
4bia keeps strictly to the idea of the horror movie as a carnival spookshow, its episodes inspired by urban legends and decidedly lacking in depth or subtext. Only wanting your audience to have fun isn't one of the cardinal sins of film making, of course, as long as you are able to actually make your film entertaining.
Apart from "Tit for Tat", the anthology's stories deliver the entertainment they are promising through concentrated simplicity and directness. The segments are expertly kept at an ideal length to not overstay their welcome.
Unfortunately, Purikitpanya's episode drags the experience down a little through the hallmarks of everything that is annoying in modern horror Asian or American - irritating jump cuts, a camera operator with the shakes and a piss-based colour scheme - but that's why DVDs have chapters, I suppose.
Three good segments out of four is a good enough quota for an anthology movie in any case and while 4bia is not a masterpiece, I still had enough fun watching it.
Technorati-Tags: thai movies,horror,in short,banjong pisanthanakun,youngyooth thongkonthun,parkpoom wongpoom
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- 20:26 Correction: Atari would make a sale to me if their German download shop would accept PayPal and not only credit cards.
- 20:26 Atari really is the worst games publisher ever.
- 20:27 So I'm going to put my money where people actually deserve it.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Conquest (1983)
"Any reference to persons or events is purely coincidental!" (taken from the closing credits, and oh so very true).
Somewhere on a relatively civilized island in Heavy Metal magazine stoneage fantasy land, a young guy named Ilias (Andrea Occhipinti) says goodbye to his elders. He's going into the outside world to do various undefined heroic deeds, a plan that has the elder's full encouragemant (probably because they want to get rid of Ilias and his single facial expression). They even give him a potentially magic bow that will not do anything magical for much of the movie, until it starts to shoot blue laserbeams after he has proven his heroism by running away and returning.
After he has crossed the ocean, Ilias soon crosses paths with the minions of the witch Ocron (Sabrina Siani). Ocron rules her part of stoneage land with an iron hand, or however the hands of someone who is naked except for a golden mask and some crotch cloth and who masturbates with snakes when she is not eating the brains of virgins are called.
Be it as it may, the witch dreams of being killed by a faceless man with a bow, and so orders her henchmen to hunt down the one who possesses this technological wonder.
So Ilias has to do his best fighting against Ocron's henchcreatures - the shaggy people, the dudes with helmets and the evil Wookies. His best isn't much, though, and he wouldn't make it more than twenty minutes into the plot (I use the word loosely) if not for the help of a certain Mace (Jorge Rivero), supposedly the enemy of every man, yet still nice and helpful to Ilias and with a part-time family tucked away in some cave. He's so nice, he's even willing to share his woman with Ilias! It is so romantic.
Together, Mace and Ilias are going to stroll through stoneage fantasy land, fight a little against zombies and cobweb people and minions and do character stuff that doesn't make sense, until they'll finally decide to face up to Ocron's naked breasts.
Conquest, Lucio Fulci's trip into sword and sorcery land, isn't one of his best films. Its main problem lies in the fact that Fulci's strengths as a director were never in delivering the kind of excitement or action that would be helpful when making a sword and sorcery film. Our Lucio was always the man for slow, slow pacing, dream-like moods, gore and completely weird shit. He provides these four things in copious amounts here, but hides much of it behind layers and layers of fog that make watching the movie something of a chore. The dry ice machines were certainly working overtime when Fulci made Conquest, so much so that a re-titling into The Fog, Part 2 would be all too well deserved.
Fulci fans like me won't avoid a film just because it's boring, slow and so foggily shot that the viewer will have difficulty making out much of what's going on of course, and you could argue that Conquest is quite a fun time - if you are able to adapt your expectations and don't watch it as a fantasy adventure but as a part of Fulci's body of work that's only nominally in a different genre than his best films and in truth part of the genre known as "the Fulci film".
If you manage to do this, you'll be confronted with some wonderously freakish monsters like the cobweb people and a merry amount of gore, including a woman being ripped apart and many loving close-up shots of oozing bumps, all set to a partially recycled Claudio Simonetti soundtrack.
One could also argue that the script - in its own elliptical and illogical way - does some rather clever and ironic things with the dreaded "Hero's Journey" formula (against which I'll surely write a rant filled with excessive cursing and violent fantasies about George Lucas in the future), especially with regards to the (closeted gay if I've ever seen one) relationship of Ilias and Mace and the identity of the hero who finally slays the witch. On the other hand, you could use the same ideas and moments to call the script lazy and stupid.
It's just a very peculiar film, bound to leave most viewers unsatisfied through its dubious pacing and foggy visuals, but fascinating enough for lovers of weird Italian shit and/or Lucio Fulci.
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Monday, June 15, 2009
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Sunday, June 14, 2009
In short: The Video Dead (1987)
The accidental delivery of a cursed TV set shortens the life span of a writer (Michael St. Michaels) considerably, when a bunch of zombies crawls out of the thing and kills him.
Three months later - during which time the zombies just stood around in the woods enjoying the scenic view - Jeff (Rocky Duvall) and Zoe Blair (Roxanna Augesen) move into the house to prepare it for the arrival of their business tripping parents. All too soon the two teenagers played by twens experience the awesome power of the evil TV machine and its zombie minions. Fortunately, a Texan expert (Sam David McClelland, wearing a very Texan cowboy hat and sometimes putting on an accent, well, kinda) comes to help the aerobic student(!?) and her brother.
This is 80s horror filmmaking from the bottom of the barrel, and therefore quite fun to watch, if one either has a high tolerance for boredom and stupidity or fast forwards through the slow and unexciting two thirds of the film that consist of people doing nothing of interest and just watches the awesomely stupid parts, like the scene in which bridal gown zombie kills a woman by putting her into the washing machine she herself just jumped out of. It goes round and round, you know.
There's also quite a bit of new zombie lore to enjoy: zombies are dead people who think they are alive, and they kill the living because the damn breathers remind the poor things of the fact that they are indeed dead. They also don't approve of mirrors (remind them of being dead and ugly), and only kill people who show fear of them (unless the "script" demands something else). The video dead can only be killed in two ways - you can either treat them as sims and lock them in somewhere they can't escape from until their bladders pop until they eat each other, or you can just kill them like you would do with any normal person (not that I recommend murder). The latter won't really kill them, of course, but since these here zombies think they are alive, they'll think that you've killed them and will some day just rot away - but only if you don't bury them and make sure (chainsaws are your friend!) they can't run away. Unless another zombie wakes them up again. And if you can laugh about that one, you'll probably have a decent amount of fun with The Video Dead.
If not, you'd better stay as far away as possible or you just might end up like poor Zoe, giggling in your comfy room in the Arkham Asylum.
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Saturday, June 13, 2009
Woods Are Wet (1973)
Japan, some time in the 1920s or 30s. Young Sachiko (Hiroko Isayama) wanders the countryside. She has been wrongly accused of the murder of her mistress and is now on the run. Her luck seems to take a turn for the better when an obviously well off woman (Rie Nakagawa) gives her a lift and invites Sachiko into her home. She tells the girl that she is in dire need of female company to distract her from her brute of a husband (Hatsuo Yamaya) and that she would be delighted to take Sachiko in as a friend.
In the pair's strange house in the woods, things turn out to be quite a bit different. Husband and wife threaten to call the police on Sachiko if the girl doesn't help them with the little games they so like to play. The pair runs an inn in their house, not for money, mind you, but for the pleasure they derive from torturing, raping and killing their guests. Of course they wouldn't presume that Sachiko is going to help them with this, instead, she'll just have to run along and warn their newest guests of the danger they are in. If those guests manage to escape, her hosts won't bother Sachiko anymore.
Woods Are Wet is a Nikkatsu film loosely based on elements of de Sade's Justine (fortunately not on the lists and the repetition) and functions, depending on one's inclinations, either as a Sadean fairytale or as a darkly comic nightmare. It is a very beautiful film in any case. Even the bleached VHS prints that are the only way to see it in the West right now can't hide director Tatsumi Kumashiro's incredible use of candle light and shadows completely.
Kumashiro's gaze on the rather unpleasant things that are inflicted upon his innocent heroine (played by Hiroko Isayama with the shell-shocked look of a survivor) is cool and clinical. While the film doesn't show much compassion towards anyone, it also isn't complicit with the sadists, unless you take its refusal to judge as complicity. After sucking us in - as Sachiko is sucked into the world of the homicidal sadist philosophers - the camera is just there to show us things, leaving the viewer in the position of a cold and distanced voyeur.
A further degree of abstraction is provided by copious black boxes which cruelly (and isn't that Sadean?) break up Kumashiro's meticulous framing of the sex scenes. The director, or so the film's titles inform us, wasn't too pleased with the usual fogging of not unimportant parts of the human body the censor demanded, and used the big black blocks in protest of the custom. The way these blocks are used is often very funny, and I dare you not to giggle (quite nervously, but still) during the climactic orgy/male rape/torture/necrophilia sequence.
This is a film in dire need of a subtitled DVD by a company like Mondo Macabro. I'm pretty sure it would be even more fascinating if one could actually see more of what's happening on screen or even make out people's facial expressions.
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Friday, June 12, 2009
Help a writer out!
Catherynne M. Valente of The Orphan's Tales and Palimpsest fame has been hit hard by the economic crisis and bad luck.
If you have a little money to spare, take a look here and see how you can help to keep one of our great living fantasy writers with a roof over her head. And/or post about it!
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In short: (Hollywood) Meatcleaver Massacre (1977)
Christopher Lee has been kidnapped! His abductors keep him in a hut, probably hidden away deep in some Bigfoot-infested woods and guarded by inbred cannibals, and force him to hold a long, mysterious and mysteriously long monologue into the camera. We'd better listen closely - this won't be important for the rest of the movie at all. When his majesty finally stops droning, the film's actual story begins (without him, of course).
A Professor Cantrell (James Habiff) and his family are assaulted in their own home by four inexplicably disgruntled drugged-out students of his, finally allowed to get their Manson on. The Professor's wife and children, and Poopser, their dog, don't survive the encounter, while the Professor himself only lives on in a vegetative state. He is a Professor of "that spooky stuff", though, and his spirit conjures up an old Gaelic god (Brak? Mobrak? Morrack?) to take vengeance on the murderers. The killers die one by one in rather peculiar ways (death by film projector, anyone?). From time to time, a cop (J. Arthur Craig) waddles through a scene, mumbling hypnotically. We end on the bad guys' leader Mason (Larry Justin), giggling away in his fine new padded cell, staring at an hallucinatory eyeball. Then Christopher Lee - now obviously barely able to hold back his laughter - appears again to tell us another unrelated story about shenanigans at a shaman congress. I hope he'll escape from his hut soon.
What begins as an exercise in boredom (hello, Christopher Lee at his droniest), soon transforms into a prime piece of hilarity, only to take its final form as a creature made in equal parts of the hilarious (basically whenever someone opens his mouth), the baffling (the sudden visit in porno land, the film's mere existence, Christopher Lee), and the weirdly disturbing. Meatcleaver Massacre is an exciting case of filmmaking at its most psychotically deranged, there's no sense, no plot, but moments of utterly beautiful nonsense one usually only encounters in dreams, sometimes building up to a fittingly nightmarish feeling of dread that is soon replaced by fits of laughter or helpless attempts to parse the dialogue.
How this film came to be, or why it does not contain a single meatcleaver, is a mystery to me, and honestly, I wouldn't want it to be any other way. It's enough to know of its existence. Watching it more than ten or twelve times a year would probably be bad for one's mind.
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Thursday, June 11, 2009
Bored Hatamoto - Acrobats of Death (1959)
It's 1690, the period of Japan's Tokugawa Shogunate, and trouble is brewing in Edo. The successful completion of the Yushima shrine calls for celebration, and has even attracted a troupe of Chinese acrobats. During the celebrations, a close advisor of the Shogun is mysteriously assassinated. The magistrate Sakai is very fast in blaming the deed on the secret Christian sect of Edo.
Soon, a series of arsons, robberies, abductions and further murders perpetrated by masked men who leave crosses in the houses they plunder and loudly declare themselves to be Christian crusaders seems to prove the magistrate right. But there is another, more subtle string of murders that does not fit Sakai's theory at all - some of the hidden Christians of Edo are killed in the same ways as the Shogun's advisor, pointing to a conspiracy against the Shogunate itself that uses the Christians as its scapegoat.
Fortunately for the Tokugawa, Saotome Mondonosuke (Utaemon Ichikawa), a direct retainer of the Shogun who has been declared "to stand above the law", takes an interest in the situation, and uses a combination of his skills as a detective, his masterful swordsmanship, and his sympathy with the less fortunate tiers of Japanese society to save the day.
Acrobats of Death is chambara in a style that would very soon start to look quite old-fashioned compared to the wonders and atrocities the genre would reach for in the 60s. This doesn't make it a bad movie, quite the opposite, it's excellent fun when you keep in mind that this provides what samurai films of its style and time were supposed to provide - a rollicking good time for a matinee audience, comparable to a fine Hollywood swashbuckler.
Sure, the film is sometimes a little stiff, a wee bit too melodramatic, Yashushi Sasaki's direction isn't all that inspired, but the plot moves along at an excellent pace and the film has a highly likeable and charismatic hero in Ichikawa's Saotome. The latter shouldn't come as a surprise, since the "Bored Hatamoto" was Ichikawa's signature role, much like Zatoichi would become Shintaro Katsu's or Nemuri Kyoshiro Raizo Ichikawa's (no relation with Utaemon, by the way). Unfortunately, there's not much information about actor/producer Ichikawa or the Bored Hatamoto films to be found online in any language I speak, so I can't even say how many films the series had or what place Acrobats of Death has in it.
While the film's plot is quite obvious, the script has some surprising flourishes one wouldn't necessarily expect. The Chinese acrobats at first look and act like the sort of racist stereotypes that wouldn't be out of place next to Boris Karloff as Fu Manchu, but the film provides a perfectly natural and ironic explanation for this that I can't bring myself to reveal.
Then there's a strangely democratic subtext for a film about a man who stands above the law and defends the Tokugawa Shogunate. The film (and its hero) very firmly believe in the rule of law and in the right of the poor and disenfranchised of a society to be treated fairly. It's not very subtly done, and not unproblematic in its context, but still commendable.
So, Acrobats of Death seems to me invaluable as a look into the chambara before the genre got all mad and weird and bloodthirsty. Even better - it's a fun and clever film.
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Wednesday, June 10, 2009
The best thing about videogames?
Is that people can play them somewhat against the grain. Look at what this gentleman is doing with The Sims 3! The rather sad adventures of a homeless girl and her mad father, at once funny and really more than a little poignant.
Revenge of Three Films Make A Post
Django Shoots First (1966): One of the dozens of Djangos who roam the Italian West (played by Glenn Saxson) takes vengeance for his murdered and double-crossed father and gets rich in the process. The film is a bit too lighthearted for my tastes in Spaghetti Western and lacks emotional resonance even in the moments when it should have it. None of the actors are all that memorable (especially not the zero sum of a Django) apart from Evelyn Stewart in the sort of femme fatale role she could probably do in her sleep. But director Alberto De Martino does have enough of a knack for action scenes to make for a passably diverting little movie. Unless you dislike bar brawls, that is.
Devil Species (2004): A scientist turns into a snake monster thanks to the combination of the poison of the Devil Snake and a new experimental serum. He of course goes on a very cost-conscious rampage, while some (okay, one) of his victims turn into snake person zombies. This mildly entertaining Thai monster movie (directed by someone with the most excellent name of Poom Opium) would feel right at home on the SciFi Channel, if it didn't eschew crappy CGI for not completely ineffective practical effects and if not for the American mainstream's fear of non-white people playing the lead roles in a movie.
Three On A Meathook (1972): William "Grizzly" Girdler's debut film meanders between proto-slasher and 70s independent psycho killer movie. Too bad that it's so boring in every aspect. Girdler's static and unimaginative direction can't even milk shots of the less savory parts of Louisville or terrible crimes of interior decoration properly for mood or life. The title's great, though.
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Tuesday, June 9, 2009
The Postman Strikes Back (1982)
In the early phase of the Chinese republic, when most of the country is controlled by warlords, a certain Mister Hu (Eddy Ko, who will not turn out to be an evil Japanese ninja, oh no) hires a small group of men to transport four chests containing something of utmost importance secretly to the warlord who controls the strategically valuable Laome Pass.
These men are the courier Ma (Leung Kar-Yan) whose profession is slowly becoming obsolete with the growing availability of the railroad, a young thief named Yao Jin (Yuen Yat-Choh), Ma's good friend, the alcoholic and slightly mad explosives expert Bu (Fan Mei-Sheng - and is this how you'd want your explosives expert?) and the professional gambler and cool scarf-wearer Fu Jun (a young and skinny Chow Yun-Fat - count those rips!).
As it goes in films like this, the men soon get some female company in the form of Guifa (Cherie Chung before she was too annoying), who has a crush on Ma, but nominally just wants his help to get to Shanghai and a Miss Li (Guk Ching-Suk), whom they save from bandits.
The small party will have to brave many dangers in the form of bandits, revolutionaries (which in this case means democrats), nature, and a violent past that will come to haunt Yao Jin and Fu Jun with even more people out to kill them. Would you believe there will be small buds of love growing? That the men will become friends despite all their differences? That there will be betrayal, blood, and tears?
Yes, it's one of those films, but it's a good one of its type, with a script that doesn't shy away from cruel, sometimes unfair consequences for characters' actions unlike a comparable Hollywood script would do.
Stylistically, Postman is quite different from the better known, frenetically paced supernatural wuxia that would come later in director Ronny Yu's career (or the films he has made in Hollywood, for that matter), mostly utilizing actual locations instead of beautifully artificial sets and running along at a leisurely pace instead of jumping screaming in your face. I think the film is influenced by the more historically minded Spaghetti Western of Leone and Corbucci, sharing some plot points I'm not going to spoil, certain parts of their visual style as well as a similar outlook on history, although it never gets as explicit about Yu's own politics as some of Corbucci's works do about their director.
The action is mock realistic and quite bloody, but fortunately not so realistic as not to throw things like pick-a-back fu, shawl fu, a magnetic ninja or rat grenades at the viewer when it is deemed necessary and most certainly not willing to give up on a spectacular set piece for stupid things like the laws of physics.
The actors are all game, with a young Chow Yun-Fat doing some neat cigarette acting and Eddy Ko being his typical evil and untrustworthy self, and the rest of the cast acquitting themselves with the dignified professionalism of people who simply know how to do their jobs.
Despite its stupid title, The Postman Strikes Back is a very fine film, not as spectacular and complex an historically minded martial arts adventure as Once Upon A Time In China perhaps, but still worth it.
Technorati-Tags: chow yun-fat,ronny yu,hong kong movies,martial arts,adventure,reviews,leung kar-yan,eddy ko,fan mei-sheng
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Monday, June 8, 2009
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Sunday, June 7, 2009
In short: Mark of the Witch (1970)
More regional American filmmaking goodness, if your definition of goodness includes the early exploits of future TV show director Tom Moore in an exploitation film that doesn't dare to be all that exploitative - after all, it's made in Dallas.
You might have heard this plot before: Margery, a powerful witch (Marie Santell) is hanged (oh! historical accuracy!) for her wicked ways, thanks to the treachery of her co-witch and former lover (Robert Elston). Of course she's laying a wordy yet unspecific curse on him and his descendents.
300 years later, Mac Stuart, one of those descendents (also played by Robert Elston, of course), works as a college professor teaching his students the most interesting things about that groovy thing known as The Occult. When he and his students hold a séance, the young, naive and headburstingly innocent Jill (Anitra Walsh) is possessed by the spirit of the witch.
After proving the truthfulness of her possession by exploding Mac's budgie, the girl ropes Mac and her boyfriend Alan (Darryl Wells) into helping her attain some not clearly defined goal.
While Alan and Mac search behind her back for a way to exorcise her, witch girl does the usual stuff - some suggestive dancing, seducing people (don't fear, there are no breasts for you to see here), hypnotizing them into selling their souls to Satan and then killing them. But will she survive the psychedelic cross light show Alan and Mac have prepared for her?
Mark of the Witch is your typical, generic, cheap early 70s witchcraft film, filmed in the sort of colour that lets even brown look like a primary colour, with competent but not interesting direction and amateur actors.
Seeing that not much happens, the whole affair stands and falls with Anitra Walsh's Jill. I really wouldn't call her a good or effective actress, her "innocent" pre-possession Jill is so dreadful as to make the witch automatically incredibly sympathetic just by virtue of not being Jill, but as soon as she gets possessed she goes for a stupidly enthusiastic version of evil I couldn't help but like. It's just too bad that the film is so timid that she isn't allowed to do much, with all the seduction, murder and satanic rituals played out as harmless as possible.
The early 70s atmosphere is quite interesting here - the characters aren't hippies (I repeat, it's made in Dallas), but young and hip enough to have taken on all the worst characteristics of hippiedom, especially an incredible amount of sexism that leads to pearls of period dialogue like "I like my chicks dumb, but you baby are something else" to which the "chick" in question not answers with a kick to the groin but a giggle.
Yeah, you're bound to applaud when Jill kills 'em.
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