While things moved around and clicked and cackled over the last week or so, I would find myself with some time, but not a lot of time, or if it was a lot of time, it was at the waning end of a long day, So what to do with that time? Watch movies, but not have time to write about them. That’s the cartoon snowball rolling down a mountain and growing into a giant all-devouring globe of hungry ice that is my life.
I’m staring down the barrel of beginning of a new writing project in the next week or so – in fact, the first step of that was what rolled over my Sunday. So pretty soon, my time for staring at a blank piece of virtual paper is going to be spent in the service of another master. Sorry. But this one will be paying me money.
So I better write about that growing list while I still can.
First there was the run-up to Halloween.
In any book or article about Hong Kong movies in general, or Asian horror movies in particular, you’re going to run into Black Magic (1975) a lot. This was an attempt to catch the wave of Western horror that was sweeping the markets in the wake of The Exorcist, a movie that moved HK cinema beyond ghost stories and into the land of the extreme. Black Magic kicks off a cinematic trend that would eventually lead to outrageous stuff like Centipede Horror and Seeding of a Ghost. As I started exploring Asian cinema in the early 90s, I had to take what I could get, so Seeding was one of my first experiences; it’s no wonder that Black Magic seems tame by comparison.
It starts strongly enough, with our Black Magician slicing off pieces of a corpse (handily stored in his hut) and burning them in a ritual to send a death spell at a philandering husband and his lover. Our White Magician shows up at the murder scene, immediately deduces who did this horrible thing, and starts a spell that sends horrible things back at Black Magician, who manages to escape while his hut collapses and burns.
Well, enough of that, though. In the big city, a youthful Ti Lung plays an architect who is being stalked by an incredibly horny (but rich) widow played by Lily Li. Ti wants nothing to do with her though, planning to marry his sweetheart. When a spurned gigolo (played by Lo Lieh, no less) hires the Black Magician to put a love spell on Lilly so he can get his hands on her money, Black accurately sizes up the Gigolo’s character and only applies a one-night spell. Lilly forces the Gigolo to tell her about the Black Magician, and visits him to place the Architect under her spell for a year. The love spell is applied on his wedding day, and Ti leaves his bride at the reception.
When the spurned bride and Ti’s friends try to find out what the hell is going on, Lilly pays the Black Magician to put the Death Hoodoo on the bride; Her landing in the hospital, her body riddled with parasitic worms leads an old retainer to remember the White Magician of his youth. White cures her by ramming a bamboo straw in her back so the worms crawl out (ew), and the battle for Ti Lung begins in earnest.
The trappings of the various spells are intriguing: pieces of corpses, human breast milk, centipedes (White has the best line when Ti Lung is recovering from his first bout of bewitchment: “Feed him these centipedes in the morning. He’ll come to his senses for a while.”). The structure is a bit repetitive, though, with Ti under the spell, then rescued, then put under the spell again, to pad out the running time. The climactic battle between the Black and White Magicians is supposed to wow you, of course, with Black pulling out all sorts of skull mirrors and a rotting head that shoots green laser beams, but all it really does is convince you that William Girdler saw it while working out the ending for The Manitou all cartoon ray blasts and lightning. As the first of its kind, it commands some respect, but make sure you see it before any of its weirder and grosser and more insane progeny.
Next up was Ravenous (1999) yet another movie on my list of Stuff I Hadn’t Seen But It Was High Time I Did. In its heyday, it had lots of Internet buzz, many of my friends positively love it, I’ve had this copy forever. So. Time to watch it.
Ravenous is a deuced odd movie.
Disturbed Mexican-American War veteran Boyd (Guy Pearce) is exiled to Fort Spencer, a remote, ramshackle frontier outpost populated by damaged individuals. He arrives just in time for a horror story from a bedraggled refugee (Robert Carlyle) whose wagon train, trapped in winter storms, turned to cannibalism. The commanding officer (Jeffrey Jones) states, rightly enough, “This is what we’re here for,” and leads most of the fort – five men – to investigate. Things go rather downhill for everyone from there, and half the fun of Ravenous is watching these berserk circumstances develop.
I had a general idea of the subject matter and how the story would develop (and as two of the characters at the Fort are Native Americans, you just know the Wendigo legend is going to pop up); but what I wasn’t prepared for was how it developed. The Wendigo legend states that whenever a man turns to eating the flesh of another man, this is all he ever wants, forever. Another thread of cannibal legend – that by eating another person, you gain their strength and vitality – is also laden all through the movie, and presented as absolutely true – characters are saved from mortal wounds by the rapid healing engendered by a diet of long pig. That kind of caught me unawares.
It was like watching that episode of Chuck Norris Karate Kommandos that presents voodoo black magic, including voodoo dolls and zombies, to be absolutely real, which is not the sort of thing you expect in a children’s cartoon. That sort of disconnect.
(Where else can you find a discussion about cannibalism, Chuck Norris, and cartoons? The Internet, ladies and gentlemen!)
It is amazing Ravenous exists at all, given the oddness of the story, and its troubled history. The original director was sacked two weeks into production and replaced by Antonia Bird, largely a TV director, who rises to the challenge magnificently. I daresay having a woman at the helm helped to punch up the black comedy quotient quite a bit, because this is truly what this is: jet black comedy wrapped in a horror movie masquerading as a Western. I can’t say I love it as much as my friends, but it is a unique movie, well worth seeing.
Saturday morning belonged to Drive Angry (2011), another movie that had gotten good buzz. As I recall, I bought this Blu-Ray at a Black Friday sale last year for $5.00.
And finally, here is a movie I can be enthusiastic about.
Nicolas Cage plays the appropriately named John Milton, a hardass felon who breaks out of Hell because the Satanic cult who murdered his daughter is now planning to sacrifice his infant granddaughter during the next full moon. Milton teams up with Piper (Amber Heard). a similarly hardass ex-waitress who’s not afraid to throw a punch or shoot a gun. Besides the apparently limitless number of murderous cult members standing in his way, there’s also the small matter of a demon named The Accountant (William Fichtner, who is having a grand time) sent to bring Milton back to Hell. Fortunately, Milton also stole an arcane weapon called The Godkiller…
It has been a long time since I’ve seen a movie like this deliver on all its promises. Action-packed, dripping with sardonic humor, gory, loud, profane. Why in the hell this movie was not a bigger hit is beyond me, but then I also have to admit that my tastes are somewhat more rarefied than that of the rest of the movie-going public. The fact that its smart enough to give Tom Atkins an extended cameo only enhances it in my eyes.
If I have two cavils about Drive Angry, it’s these: the movie seems to owe a debt to author Richard Kadrey’s punk-occult-neo-noir Sandman Slim novels; and the sex-during-a-gun-fight scene was done in one of my other favorite stupid over-the-top action movies, Shoot ‘Em Up. Then, Hollywood has always rather been like Ravenous, anyway: constantly eating its dead. So why I should be surprised to find DNA from other movies is a measure of my naiveté, I suppose.
Anyway, yeah, I dug Drive Angry. Much better Ghost Rider movie than either of the flicks bearing that name.
I haven’t even hit Halloween yet, and we’re already over 1500 words. We’ll leave on a high note, and pick this up later.
In my book, there are a few things you don’t discuss, and by you I mean me. These are the usual suspects, politics and religion. Yes, I have my opinions and beliefs. They are mine. If you ask, I will likely tell you them, but they’re not open to discussion. If I’m interested, I’ll ask yours. But frankly, I’m usually not interested.
Nothing comes of these discussions. Well, if there was an actual discussion, it might; but generally, on these subjects, it just becomes an acrimonious debate, each side attempting to score points and drown out the other. I don’t have time or the patience for it. My blood pressure is finally stabilized, and I intend to keep it that way.
Yes, future archeologists, I am writing this in an Election Season. How very astute of you.
I voted on the very first day of Early Voting, another reason why political discussion is a waste of time with me. It’s done, I’ve moved on. In the car, if I don’t need a traffic report, I use an MP3 player instead of the radio (Houston radio is mostly garbage, anyway). I don’t watch much TV in the first place; Netflix and DVDs are my entertainment source. There is no other media solution for the Already Voted, no surcease from political advertising, and if there were, it would probably be infested with those waiting until Election Day or not voting at all… everybody’s sick of it.
It could be worse. I could live in one of those “battlefield states”. Texas is as red as undercooked steak, something my nose gets rubbed in repeatedly. It is a place where you can wear a T-shirt that says “Fuck Obama” to a family restaurant with apparent impunity.
But there I go, getting political. It’s infectious, in the worst way. It surrounds you, engulfs you like an amoeba. I check Facebook only sparingly; I’m not inclined to shun any friends because they hold a differing opinion from mine, unless it’s on some subject like whether we should eat arsenic or not. But it can be distressing in a very real sense. As I say, these things have a tendency to get ugly very quickly.
Our neighbor across the street has had a sign reading “Vote Republican – We’ve Can’t Afford Any More Change” in his yard. I find it intriguing it is not specifically a Romney endorsement, but I shrug and move on. His yard, his opinion. That is what makes America cool.
My wife is an ardent Obama supporter, however, and that sign rankled. So much she obtained a larger Obama sign and placed it in our front yard. And got Obama magnets to put on our cars. All very well and good. They’re the only political signs on our little cul-de-sac, so we’re nice and balanced.
Then I found a little leaflet in our mailbox, shoved far back, farther back than the mailman ever does – with studied efficiency he places the mail near the front, slaps the box shut, and moves on. It was a small, trifold religious pamphlet with the words “DEATH — ARE YOU PREPARED?” on the front, the screed in the middle, and a form for more information on the back. That’s what caught my attention:
Yeah, I got smart and blotted out actionable stuff. But, let me attempt to translate:
obama voter are taker
wake up and smell the roses
“obama” is the baby killer party
Gay marriage (although that might be “Guy marriage”, which is to them, I am sure, the same thing)
you can’t be a Christian and vote for a baby killer
The party who kicked “God” out
This is my first actual, physical piece of hate mail. Oh, I’ve gotten hateful e-mail before, mainly from fanboys who were butthurt that I did not regard KISS Meets The Phantom of the Park with proper reverence, or that I might have hurt the BeeGee’s feelings when I trashed the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band movie. I am quite, quite serious about this. Those e-mails had the same general tenor.
Of all that, I find myself most drawn to the quotation marks around “God”. I mean, was it not actually God who was kicked out, but an air-quotes “God”? Some sort of simulation? Was the writer not even certain? It’s like the quote marks around “obama” that turns “obama” into the name of the party, if not the party itself. This is the sort of thing that makes the copy editor in me nuts. Sorry, the “copy editor”.
Besides the number of Christians that have voted for baby killers in the past and will continue to (sorry, you start slinging around a broad epithet like “baby killer” I’m going to have to point out it doesn’t just refer to abortion, but every child that’s been killed in a war, that dies of malnutrition, that dies from lack of proper medical care), there is also the lovely cliché, “wake up and smell the roses”. implying I am asleep and cannot smell, which, coming from someone who intended to tell me about why their particular interpretation of a Sky Wizard should affect my life, (at least until they saw the baby eater sign in the front yard) is risible to me at the very least.
There was a cold moment of “You fucking coward, you couldn’t even say this to my face, could you?” And then, I laughed. All their saying this to my face would have gotten them was my door slammed in their face, if I had even opened it in the first place. (Last time I checked, there was no law that stated I have to open my door just because you knock on it). No, this time they had not even approached my door, perhaps afraid the evil Obama sigil would reach out and grab them like a lamprey, sucking out all their sweet moral fiber.
So that one sign had done what no amount of not answering the door or Sorry, not interested or Could you come back later? I’m sacrificing a black goat in the back yard right now could accomplish: it deflected the missionaries, it left me in peace. I wonder if I should leave it out there after the election.
There, that’s that. I found it interesting, that this person was so discomfited by a sign that he or she not only ignored their supposed calling but felt it necessary to put pen to paper to tell me how horrid and rotten I am. It has been that sort of election. Each side is filled with demons, and they just look like our friends used to look, they can’t be our friends anymore, they believe in the wrong things. There are times I really wish the panic merchants were right and the world would end in December. It would almost come as a relief. Things really cannot continue like this without something breaking.
In the meantime though, I’m going back to writing things not for myself and then maybe write about something safe like the movies I’ve watched (well, safe as long as I don’t diss any rock stars) and then work my three jobs in an attempt to pay this month’s bills. Cuz, you know, I’m such a taker.
It must be Fall, although the outside temperatures are still freakishly hot and humid. Honestly, the worst thing about my laziness (and lifelong pursuit of becoming so sedentary I am declared a rock formation) is that I never bothered to move somewhere colder. I like wearing jackets and sweaters, boots. I find gloves bizarrely sexy. All these things are unnecessary 10 months out of the year here in the swamplands of Texas.
So how do I know it’s Fall? Things are getting busier. Much busier. Last week I alluded to squeezing in some movies in between a weeknight show and editing two stories (I didn’t even mention shooting a third, that came up at the last minute). This week, not much better. Edited one story, trying to set up interviews for three more. Not shooting this week but I have two shows this weekend. Monday night my family celebrated my birthday, because my actual birthday night I was working the Economic Development Corporation. This afternoon I journey into town for a preliminary meeting on another educational writing project which will allow me to pay bills in a timely manner for a few months. Such is life.
In the meantime, however, there are movies. Yes, many movies. Let us begin.
Last Tuesday I gave in to an urge I’d been feeling for a while and re-watched Psycho (the original, puh-leeeeeze). This is one of those movies I just have to watch every now and then, just to drink in Hitchcock’s master class in how to do slow-burn tension-ratcheting. The set-ups are so simple, so economical, that you despair why more filmmakers can’t do equally well with so little. The answer, of course, is they’re not Hitchcock.
There are a lot of different stories about the whys and wherefores of why Psycho is in black and white. That Hitchcock thought it would make the gore less offensive, the studio didn’t want to spend a lot of money on such obvious trash that was so obviously destined to fail, that Hitchcock noticed that crappy little B&W B-movies were making money hand over fist so what would happen if we made a good one?… in the final analysis, it doesn’t matter, it just works, and at the time it probably heightened the almost documentary feel of the movie, thanks to TV news every evening in black and white. Hitchcock was using a 50mm lens, the closest to human vision, to really drag out the feeling that the viewer was a voyeur in the whole matter.
Psycho is also interesting to me as the movie that changed the way we watched movies. I remember when I was a kid in the early 60s, you went to a movie whenever you felt like it. If you arrived in the middle, well, fine, you played catch-up with your native wit, stayed through the changeover, then watched until you hit the point you entered; kids, this is where the phrase “This is where I came in” comes from. Hitchcock insisted no one be seated after Psycho began, and though I have no way of determining how well this was enforced, it still ushered in a sea change of how we attended movies. The “exclusive road show engagements” of the 50s-60s helped also, but it’s possible to point to Psycho‘s box office success as a touchstone in the practice of seeing a movie from the beginning.
I also feel the need to point out the stunning work done on my Universal Blu-Ray’s audio tracks – the crew pulled a very nice 5.1 track from the original soundtrack. It doesn’t call attention to oneself, but it beautifully broadens a monophonic track into a true soundscape that I think Hitchcock himself would have appreciated.
Next up was The Woman in Black, one of those movies I intended to see in a theater but didn’t. This is the first movie from the revived Hammer Films, leading me to expect good things. There were strands of the old Hammer DNA in evidence; a good cast, led by Daniel Radcliffe (trying to put Harry Potter behind him and somewhat succeeding) and Ciaran Hinds as the most modern member of a superstitious village; great period detail matched a superb production design. What I didn’t get was the Hammer mastery of all that is Gothic.
Woman in Black relies throughout its first half on cheap jump scares administered far too frequently; there is some good scary stuff in the second half – and more jump scares – but those times that a person suddenly appears WITH A LOUD MUSICAL STING totally squanders any good will the creepy stuff engenders. I’m still looking forward to further Hammer offerings, but this one does not go on the shelf next to the others.
And cripes, wouldn’t it easier on everyone if these superstitious villages would simply come clean with out-of-towners and just tell them why they shouldn’t go to the Old Dark House?
The Show that Saturday was cancelled – actors out-of-town – and that would usually be cause for moping about all morose-like, because that’s disastrous for my fragile economic ecosystem. But you know what? not this time. This time I knew what to do. I dropped Rick a line and asked if he wanted to waste a Saturday watching movies again. Well, by golly he did, and thereby hangs the rest of this post.
The night before this epic meeting, Rick e-mailed myself and another Crapfest pal, Alan, about finding a gray market site that was selling a piece of 70s/80s softcore to which Alan had gotten attached in his teen cable-watching days. I fired back to Rick “Never mind that, Savage Sisters is playing on Channel 11-2 RIGHT NOW.”
You see, back during one of the Crapfests, I had infected Rick with my perverse love for Cheri Caffaro. To this point, I have played the Ginger Trilogy to an appreciative (and more than a little perverted) Crapfest crowd, and I know they’ve watched H.O.T.S., on which she has a producer credit (due diligence: sweet Jesus, but I hate H.O.T.S.). More due diligence: I haven’t seen her first movie, A Place Called Today, in which she has a supporting role. But Savage Sisters is the only remaining movie I would have shown at a Crapfest, such is its quality.
To get back to our narrative: Rick doesn’t get good reception on that particular channel, so he didn’t see it, breaking his heart. Guess what, then, was the first thing we dropped into my player? (And all due glory to Brit Stand-Up Guy Dave Thomas for supplying me a flawless, letterboxed copy)
This starts in pretty typical Filipino territory; Cheri is the girlfriend of the head of the Rebels, who gets double-crossed by the villainous team of Sid Haig and Vic Diaz. Cheri and another hardcore rebel, Rosanna Ortiz (who herself has a killer filmography in the Philippines) wind up in jail under the tender care of Gloria Hendry, who is the Vice President In Charge of Torture at the prison (which I believe I recognize from Women in Cages), and knows Rosanna from their earlier prostitute days. MEANTIME, hustler John Ashley has found out Sid Haig killed the Rebels (including Cheri’s boyfriend) for a “MEELION dollars, US currency!” and recruits old pal Hendry to spring Cheri and Rosanna so they can all chase after the bucks.
PHEW. As you can tell, this isn’t your typical Filipino WiP movie; besides the complicated set-up, it also contains a rich vein of bizarre comedy, especially with the incidental characters. The corrupt General, of course, has a chest full of medals; when he removes his jacket, his dress shirt is equally decorated, so naturally, when he removes that, his undershirt is also festooned with medals. A Punjabi sidekick who speaks in gibberish only Ashley can understand, a failed kamikaze pilot, and Sid Haig doing his best to masticate the entire landscape. Since his character is “a bandit”, he wears a serape and sombrero, and uses the adjective “Stinking” every third word. As his sidekick, Vic Diaz essays an eyepatch and is apparently only invincible when his plumber’s crack is showing, like some slovenly Greek legend.
This really is one of the best Cheri Caffaro movies around, mainly, I think, because hubby Don Schain was nowhere near it.
Afterwards, we were talking about the movie while making queso, and Rick was amazed at the unexpected humor. “Yeah,” I said, “it’s like they gave Eddie Romero this amazing cast and said, Make us a women in prison picture, and what he did was give them the Death Race 2000 of women in prison movies.”
“You know,” said Rick, “I’ve never seen Death Race 2000.”
There was silence for a moment. “Keep stirring that cheese,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”
No friend of mine is going to say he’s never seen Death Race 2000.
The premise of Death Race 2000 is simplicity itself, especially if you’ve ever played the sick game in a car about how many points each pedestrian is worth. In the far-flung future of 2000, in a world devastated by “The Crash of ’79”, Mr. President (from his Summer mansion in Peking), gives the official start to the most popular sporting event evar, the Transcontinental Road Race. Five racers and their navigators, representing various tribal cliques and possessing pro-wrestler-like larger-than-life personas, charge across America, solving the overpopulation problem where they can.
Death Race 2000 is a goofy good time. Early Sly Stallone as a bad guy! Walter Cronkite impersonators! Mary Woronov! Illinois Nazis! Breasts are exposed every so often to remind us that it is, indeed, a drive-in movie. The second unit race footage is pretty good, but it’s Bartel’s sense of the absurd and savage barbs at media culture that edges this one from the ranks of forgettable action fare to actual classic. I had fun with the “remake” starring Jason Statham, but I don’t see anyone, forty years from now, excitedly pulling it from a shelf to share with their friends.
And as many times as I have seen this movie, I had never before realized John Landis had a line in it. Stallone runs him over for it.
(Oh, yeah, that guy on GetGlue who posted “This movie sucks. The remake was 10 times beter (sic).”? Keep looking over your shoulder. One day, I’ll be there.)
It was starting to get dark out. I cooked up some chicken fajitas while we played a bootleg DVD Rick had brought over, of a 1975 KISS concert. I’ve never been a fan, but Rick was exclaiming over how young they were, how energetic was the guitar work. Myself, when I walked through the room, marveled at the black-and-white video, complete with streaks and ghosting and trails whenever the highlights overpowered the tube cameras. Took me back to my days in public access at the local cable company, it did.
As we ate (and damn, I’m a good cook), we tried to get back to the concept that I have a List to watch and we were supposed to be whittling that down, so we slipped in Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold.
This is honestly about the best-looking, if most absurd, blaxploitation movie I have ever seen.
So the 6’2″ Tamara Dobson is back as Cleopatra, and this time she’s come to Hong Kong to track two of her agents who were trying to infiltrate a heroin ring, only to be captured by the Dragon Lady (Stella Stevens, keeping up the tradition of odd female villains in the short series). Cleo immediately disses her boss, Norman Fell (engendering the phrase, “Oooh, Norman Fell burn!”) and decides to go out on her own. In a foreign city. Where she doesn’t even speak the language.
Well, that’s not the only extraordinary thing that’s going to happen in this movie. Cleo falls in with an equally tough HK woman and her gang of motorcycle-riding investigators, and we’re off. Like I said, this is an amazingly well-shot movie. Run Run Shaw is listed as a producer, and money is thrown at the screen in all the right places. Chase scenes through the crowded streets of Hong Kong are thrilling, and there is plenty of pyro and gunfire. What there isn’t, sadly, is much of a compelling story, but it is overall a painless way to spend 90 minutes.
Then, at last, the Final Round. What Rick had been looking forward to all evening, if not all week: Fight For Your Life.
Fight For Your Life carries with it a lot of baggage. What we have here is a bona fide video nasty, put on that daunting list along with such movies as Driller Killer and I Spit On Your Grave. Banned outright in Sweden. Legend is it caused riots in the grindhouses of 42nd Street.
Rick was looking forward to the ultimate in transgressive cinema. What I have learned about Rick is that he can buy seriously into hype. He still curses the day he bought a ticket to Gates of Hell and saw neither gates, nor hell, nor reason it was supposedly banned in 39 countries.
Anyway.
Fight For Your Life concerns three escapees from a prison van: Jessie Lee Kain ( a very early appearance by William Sanderson) , Chino (Daniel Faraldo, who went on to a decent enough TV career) , and Ling (Peter Yoshida, who… well, not so much). After a fairly brutal crime spree as they edge toward the Canadian border, the three take a middle class black family (the Turners) hostage, intending to steal their car and make their run after dark.
This is apparently racist.
As you might imagine with a musical name like Jessie Lee Kain, the leader of the thugs is not just a bigot, he is a unrepentant suuuuuper bigot. A whole lot of the movie is Kain spouting his racist bile at the Turners and generally being a hateful jackass. Rick and I were concerned that he would run out of epithets, and to be sure, at one point he begins referring to Mom Turner as “Deputy Dawg”. This frankly bewildered me, because I remember Deputy Dawg. He was a TerryToon back in the early 60s, and moreover, he was a white dog. I don’t get it. but anyway…
So what we have here is basically a racist version of The Desperate Hours, with some diversions along the way, like young son Turner’s white friend showing up and finding out the family is hostage, but (work with me here) Ling, who was sent out to capture the white girlfriend of the (now deceased) elder Turner son – and winds up accidentally killing her – well Ling finds the white boy running away and kills him with a rock. Not too swift, is Ling.
So there’s a little more going on here than a hostage drama. We also cut away every now and then to the antics of Rulebook Riley, a New York police detective pursuing our ne’er-do-wells. As his name implies, Rulebook has a zero-tolerance policy toward everything. Jaywalkers, drunk drivers, spitting on the sidewalk. If Rulebook catches you breaking the law, you are screwed.
Some actual detective work does bring the police, at last, to the Turner house (not that Kain and company have been particularly stealthy). One policeman finds the white kid’s body in the forest and carries him to the command center, and wouldn’t you know it, he was the Sheriff’s son. One screaming charge at the house later, Kain has put another cop on his kill list. But! The distraction allows our hostages to turn the tables, and now it’s revenge time!
This is what Rick was looking forward to, and so was I and so is every audience member that ever watched this (except for the ones that thought Kain was the hero and that he was exercising some restraint. God help me, I said that as a joke but it occurs to me there are actually are such people). I mean, one of the alternate titles was The Hostage’s Bloody Revenge, for pete’s sake. So let’s see what we get. Spoilers ahoy.
Now first of all, the cops have this parabolic listening device that no one can get to work properly, until Rulebook, in a fit of frustration, bashes it a good one and it suddenly works like a charm. He hears the Turners discussing what to do with their tormentors, and he also finds out all three men raped the daughter. Rulebook suddenly switches to a much older rulebook and orders the cops to wait.
Chino gets shot in the balls. Okay, that’s a start, a fitting end for a rapist. Ling freaks out and jumps through a window, and gets himself impaled on an absurdly long and apparently strong piece of glass. That… was weird. The daughter approaches Kain with an electric carving knife, but she can’t go through with it.
It’s all going to end up with a standoff between Pop Turner (Robert Judd, incidentally) and Kain, with Rulebook tossing Turner his pistol. Kain gives us the final piece of his backstory, that his mother ran off with a black man, and then he gets shot in the throat. The end.
Rick – and the aforementioned masses who bought a ticket – were expecting a climax like The Last House on the Left times ten, but got… well, some blood but not a whole lot of catharsis.
Fight For Your Life is a pretty competently made little thriller that goes a little long in the second act, but then we’re also talking about a video nasty with some actual character beats. The Turner family is well drawn – the filmmakers made damn sure where our sympathies lie – and it all comes just that close to making it to the next level of actually good movie as compared to grindhouse button-pusher. There’s something to be said that all the real violence, save the daughter’s rape, is perpetrated against white people. The cops, a gas station attendant, a liquor store owner, the white kid, the white girlfriend… but now, having made that observation, I have no idea what to do with it.
The Turners themselves have a broad range of racial opinions. Mom doesn’t like honkies and is still pretty pissed off that her elder son had a white girlfriend (this is one of the saddest ignored threads in the movie: had Ling brought the girlfriend to the house instead of chasing her over a cliff, there would have been a whole new dimension of racism and possible character reconciliation… but no, we went with some boobs and a mannequin tossed into a waterfall). Daughter loves the white girl friend and wishes she’d had time to get married into the family.The young son, of course, has not only a white boy as his best friend, but the friend is the son of The Man. Pop Turner is a preacher, who is going to have his faith righteously tested and eventually returned to its Old Testament roots. And Grandma has seen it all and weathered it all, and gets the best lines.
Like I said… this close.
So a sadder but wiser Rick went home that night, denied once again the ultra-violent extravaganza that had been promised him. But, as the mantra of the crap cineaste goes, “now we can say we’ve seen it”, and hopefully, next time, we won’t get fooled again.
Yes, we will. We’re saps, and really, I think there’s a part of us that enjoys being saps, we enjoy making movies in our heads that do not exactly turn out the same on screen… for some of us, that’s the only way we have left to be surprised.
Gadfreys, but I’ve been a lazy fellow lately. Just laid about, watching horror stuff. That’s not really an option this week, as I have to complete two stories, shoot a third, and do two acting gigs, so let me be pretty quick with this:
I used Netflix a lot during this binge. It appealed to my laziness as I didn’t even have to cross the room to put in a disc. First up, there was Nightmares in Red, White & Blue, subtitle “The Evolution of the American Horror Film”. Back in the day, i was going to write a book about how horror movies, and the political context of the times in which they were made. I don’t have to do that, because Joseph Maddrey did, and it is the basis of this documentary.
Nightmares is pretty well done; the experts providing insight include folks like George Romero, Larry Cohen, Joe Dante and John Carpenter, and Lance Henriksen providing some nice narration with the proper gravitas. The points made are very salient and well thought-out; it really is a very good treatment of the subject. Clips are plentiful. If there is a flaw, it’s that the period from the turn of the 21st century up to the doc’s year of release, 2009, seems rushed. Maybe the makers didn’t want to dwell on the era of torture porn, and I don’t blame them. This is a documentary I can recommend without hesitation, but you don’t have to trust me, have the first three minutes:
Followed that up with Celluloid Bloodbath, which is subtitled “More Prevues From Hell”. Yes, this is the follow-up to the well-regarded Mad Ron’s Prevues From Hell, which I will admit I never saw. Now, I will also admit that pretty much anything is going to suffer after a class act like Nightmares in Red, White, and Blue, but Bloodbath proves an exceptionally rough ride. The trailers themselves are great, and represent quite a few movies that haven’t been beaten to death in other comps, including rarities like The Baby, Psycho From Texas, Edgar Allen Poe’s Legend of Horror and a trailer for They Came From Within that makes you wonder how that movie ever got released in America (oh, that’s right – it was the 70’s. Never mind). The most high-profile picture represented here is The Exorcist.
The real problem with Bloodbath is the weakness of the host segments – we’re introduced to three of them, including a largely inanimate puppet, and then every sub-segment seems to have its own host – some of which seem to be taping their bits at convention tables. Some of the hosts handle their intros very well, a lot don’t, and the audio quality is all over the map. If you’re a real trailer goon like myself, you’ll tough it through those (and appreciate the good hosts all the more) for those lovely little mini-movies. Sadly the sheer number of the host segments makes Bloodbath ten minutes too long, outstaying its welcome.
I am keenly aware that there is a list of movies I have to work my way through by years end, so I roused myself from my indolence to put a disc in the machine, and that disc was Shaun of the Dead. No, I hadn’t seen it yet. Kids, this is what happens when you let an online game rule your evenings for seven years.
Anyways, as should be obvious by the name, Shaun is a zombie comedy taking place during a zombie apocalypse in England. Simon Pegg is Shaun, Nick Frost is his childhood pal Edward, and Shaun just lost his girl over an Edward-shaped albatross. Then the zombies come.
There a great deal, in the beginning, of making Shaun squirm in his uselessness, and I don’t care for cringe comedy. But there is also an incredible amount of smarts in the staging (I especially appreciate the cast-off radio newscast at the beginning, about a deep space probe returning, a la Night of the Living Dead… which makes director Edgar Wright’s contention that the later line “We’re coming to get you, Barbara!” was unintentional ring a bit false…) as the preoccupied Shaun manages for quite some screen time to not notice that everyone around him has turned into zombies.
After the rescue of mom, former (and forever) girlfriend and a couple of hangers-on, our heroes retreat to a local pub to wait out the apocalypse. Once we’re in zombie siege territory, though, the movie takes a surprisingly grim turn, causing me to mumble, “This has suddenly turned into Dawn of the Dead.” Well, the lightness does return for our end, It’s not as intense or bloody as, say, Dead Alive – but then, what is? It’s a well-made movie for people who like some yoks but still want to see someone eviscerated at some point.
And that walk-on by Martin Freeman was quite a shock.
The inclusion of that damned mall music from Dawn of the Dead slays me every time.
Now, back to Netflix.
People have been praising Ti West’s movies, and the only thing of his I had actually seen was a segment of V/H/S I didn’t really care for. But, you know, some writers can’t really handle the short story form, but they really shine at novels. There are two Ti West movies on Netflix Instant, The House of the Devil and The Innkeepers. I felt like a ghost story, so I queued up the latter.
West’s reputation is as a purveyor of slow-burn horror stories, and for a good part of The Innkeepers you’re going to have trouble distinguishing it from a slacker comedy. Two twenty-somethings, Claire (Sara Paxton) and Luke (Pat Healy) are the only two staff members at the Yankee Pedlar Inn’s final weekend before it is slated to be torn down. Luke and Claire are trying to prove the Inn is haunted before it closed, though frankly they’re not trying very hard – ha ha, those aimless twenty-somethings, huh?
Quite a bit of the first act is spent humiliating Claire in various ways – the cringe comedy is back, folks, though of a particularly American flavor this time. Things finally start getting spooky enough to justify our continued attention, but it’s not until the third act that we really hit the good haunting stuff. The climax, in particular, is really, really good, it’s just that…
This reminds me of a Movie of the Week. One that really lucked out with its cast – Kelly McGillis is great as a former TV star turned psychic, and Lena Dunham has a nice cameo – and a writer who did the filler very well, but that’s just it – it’s filler. There is about as much true spookiness here as I would get from the typical Movie of the Week.
Nostalgic horror fans, those of us who’d sit through a lot of celluloid to finally get to the scare, will find a lot to like here. I can’t imagine anyone weaned on the modern horror movie, with adrenalin-driven editing and splashy FX, to have much patience with it. Overall, I liked it, but won’t be revisiting it anytime soon.
I should also warn you: this trailer has easily three-quarters of the scares in it. Just sayin’.
Okay, last one.
Prey I stumbled onto quite by accident; the Netflix blurb made it sound quite intriguing. And what do you know: the French are back again!
The opening is especially well-done: a rustic fellow is awakened by a dog barking. He gets dressed and rushes out, searching a cornfield for his father. He finds him, injured, apparently attacked by a deer. Venturing out of the field, the man then finds four dead deer, tangled in an electric fence separating the cornfield from the woods; whatever the deer were running away from, they were more frightened of it than the electric fence.
This is a better look than you ever get in the movie.
This isn’t your typical farm, though it started that way. One of the sons started a factory producing fertilizers and pesticides, and has bought all the surrounding land for the factory and his family; he’s the younger brother of the rustic man in the last paragraph. There’s a complicated bit of intrigue where the factory owner convinces – forcing, by dint of family connections – make his daughter, an accomplished chemist, stay at the facotry for another year, despite the fact she is pregnant. The two sons, their father, and the son-in-law go into the woods to hunt down whatever it was that’s killing deer. The son-in-law hopes to make the factory owner see the light, but that ain’t gonna happen.
In the interests of making this short: what we have here is a French version of John Frankenheimer’s 1979 movie Prophecy, which was based on a novel by David Seltzer, who also wrote the source novel for The Omen. The factory has been dumping its new formula in the estate’s lake, which has caused a massive fish kill and given birth to a pack of mutant boars – not bears, boars, totally different. And our four fellows are about the only things left in the woods to eat.
Prophecy marketed itself as “The Monster Movie”, and this is precisely what we have here. Our hunters don’t suss out exactly what is happening until well after dark, so the entire flick is like one long Jurassic Park in the tall grass scene, all unseen monsters charging around and squealing. The attack scenes are very well staged and quite tense; this is likely the movie Prophecy might have wished it had been. (Due diligence: I read the novel before the movie came out, found it turgid crap, and never bothered with the movie. I am told I made the right choice).
So. Prey. Good monster movie, worth it if that’s all you want. Be aware that, unlike Prophecy, they do not give you a good look at the monsters, and some folks don’t like that. Probably because they don’t remember that giant mutant bear puppet.
In the halcyon days of my doing this regularly – writing about genre movies, specifically – when I was a contributing member of the B-Masters Cabal, there was once going to be a roundtable of movies that we hadn’t gotten around to seeing, you know, stuff that should be essential to our critical works, something like a science-fiction fan having never seen Star Wars, except not that outrageous. In my case, it would have been Georges Franju’s Eyes Without A Face, a fairly seminal horror movie.
Made in 1960, it has a plot that has been lifted several times since: a brilliant doctor doing research in tissue transplants has a terrible secret, hiding away his daughter, horribly disfigured in an auto accident which was apparently his fault. He and his assistant keep kidnapping young women and surgically removing their faces for transplant onto his daughter. Though, as mentioned, this is a plot that keeps being recycled throughout the 60s and into the 90s (witness Jess Franco’s remake Faceless), You get the indelible feeling during Eyes Without A Face that you’re definitely watching the original.
A brilliant, worldess beginning following the doctor’s assistant, Louise (Alida Valli) as she nervously dumps a young girl’s body in a river, is followed by a shrewdly low-key presentation of our basic story. Dr. Genessier (Pierre Brasseur) identifying the body as his missing daughter, then driving to his villa near his hospital, where we meet his unfortunate daughter, Christiane (Edith Scob).
It is in the person of Edith Scob that the movie achieves true transcendence. We see her true face only fleetingly, when one of Genessier’s transplants seem to have worked, but only temporarily. The rest of the time we only see the back of her head, or an amazing, expressionless mask (cast from Scob’s face) which gives her an eerie serenity – at least until you see her eyes. Scob’s figure, dressed in a Givenchy gown, gliding from room to room in her father’s mansion is one of the more haunting images in cinema, that has staying power long after viewing. I am constantly reminded of Mia Farrow, personally, but that’s my 60s upbringing, I think. So striking is Christiane’s appearance that John Carpenter points to it as a direct inspiration for Michael Myers’ mask in Halloween.
The genius of the storytelling is in its unfolding. We have no explanation for Louise’s introductory corpse-dumping, but we are pretty darn certain something untoward is afoot (the bizarre carnivale noir music by Maurice Jarre is another good hint. It reminds me of “Ernie’s Holiday Camp” from Tommy, though what to make of that I am not sure). The story’s setup is teased out over the next fifteen minutes or so with the slow unhurried deliberation of fate itself. For this we can largely thank the writing team of Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, who had Diabolique and Vertigo to their recent credit.
The role of Louise, the assistant in all this is shady, vague. We know Genessier performed some sort of operation that “saved her face”, and she wears multiple strands of pearls as a choker to hide a scar across her throat. It’s a tantalizing plot thread that is never played out (frankly, I was expecting to find out she was Christiane’s mother, who supposedly died four years before, but that’s how my twisted brain works). She’s necessary to Genessier’s procedures, of course, worming her way into the young girls’ trust before convincing them to step into the villa, where they are unceremoniously chloroformed and strapped to the operating table.
It’s inevitable that we’re going to get at least one surgery scene in a movie about face transplants, and, even employing the comparatively primitive effects of 1960, it’s still squirm-inducing. Apparently at its premiere in the Edinburgh Film Festival, it caused people to faint; subsequently released in the US under the title The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus, the scene is abbreviated with an optical zoom, but passed muster with the European censors pretty easily.
There’s another cut in that US version, and it has nothing to do with gore; it’s a scene in Genessier’s hospital, where the doctor is examining a young boy with a severe neurological affliction. He is nothing but gentle and caring in his interactions with the boy and his obviously distraught mother. That’s probably one of the deepest veins of horror tapped in Eyes; Genessier and Louise are decent people, whose love for Christiane drives them to do despicable, terrible things. Apparently the American distributor didn’t want to confuse the audience with such concepts.
Franju et Scob.
Genessier and Louise aren’t working from some meticulously planned villain plot, either, they’re obviously improvising as they go along. The first victim, who dies on the operating table is (as we’ve seen) disposed of by Louise in the opening; the second victim (who supplies the temporarily successful graft) survives, and her two kidnappers are at something of a loss as to what to do with her. She solves that by attempting to escape and either accidentally killing herself or deliberately committing suicide, we’ll never know. But their increasing desperation is becoming obvious, just as Christiane’s depression and desire to be allowed to simply die become more and more vocal.
This how Franju, when his producer (who was determined to prove French cinema could handle the realm of horror just as well as fantasy) advised him to avoid blood to prevent riling up the French censors, animal torture to avoid upsetting the British, and mad doctors to avoid pissing off the Germans… made a movie featuring all three. Franju insisted the movie was not about horror, it was about anguish… not only the anguish of the victims, but the anguish of decent people driven to extremes, and the anguish of the innocent person in whose name atrocities are committed. Eyes Without A Face, so simple on the surface, proves itself increasingly complex the more it is considered, and that is truly the mark of a masterpiece.
So after three movies of considerable quality, I felt the need to balance out my cinematic diet. And if nothing else, my collection has quite the surplus of films on the other end of that curve.
First up: The White Buffalo (1977), which is probably the oddest Jaws rip-off ever made. Charles Bronson plays an older, wiser Wild Bill Hickok who returns to an Old West that really doesn’t want him, or would prefer him dead. Hickok is suffering from recurrent dreams of a gigantic white buffalo charging toward him, and he is chasing rumors of just such a beast into the Black Hills of Dakota during a gold rush. He is also suffering from syphilis, requiring him to wear smoked glasses in bright daylight. Many he confides in think the disease is eating into his brains.
There are historians who are going to take umbrage at that supposition; it is generally agreed that Hickok was suffering at the very least from glaucoma and possibly trachoma, common at the time; but it’s typical of the revisionist Western that the syphilis rumor is presented as fact, and is of a piece with the rest of the movie. A trip to the combination bar/brothel of a boom town is one of the most raucously filthy. smoky, noisy and chaotic scenes in a Western ever. I’m in no position to judge its truthfulness, but it does stick with you.
The upshot of the movie is that the White Buffalo is real, and is rampaging through the Black Hills as Winter approaches. One Indian village is destroyed by the beast, and a little girl killed: the daughter of the tribe’s War Chief, Crazy Horse. Until he can slay the buffalo and wrap his daughter’s corpse in its pelt, her soul will be tormented; additionally, his real name is taken from him until he can achieve this, and he will be known as “Worm”. Will Sampson plays the role with great gravitas and stoicism; he’s one of the best things about the movie.
It is, of course, inevitable that the two will team up to hunt the White Buffalo, and getting to that point makes for a pretty entertaining flick, as Hickok and Crazy Horse save each other’s asses and come to respect each other, mainly because neither one has any idea who the other actually is. Jack Warden tags along as Charlie Zane “The White Warrior of Sand Creek”… which, if they’re referring to the Sand Creek Massacre is not a compliment, but Zane is pretty much the spokesman for the Indian-hating white majority in the last half of the movie.
The major problem with The White Buffalo is that it’s two-thirds of a decent movie. It’s a very entertaining revisionist western whenever the title character isn’t around – there are some scenes where it looks good, but overall, the Buffalo isn’t one of Carlo Rambaldi’s finest creations. The first half of the movie has a bunch of fun cameos – Slim Pickens as a foul-mouthed stagecoach driver, John Carradine as (of course) the town undertaker, Ed Lauter as Tom Custer (George’s kid brother), Clint Walker as murderous trapper Whistling Jack Kileen, Stuart Whitman as a frontier pimp, and Kim Novak, making one of her last screen appearances as Poker Jenny, a reformed whore from Hickok’s younger days.
The final showdown doesn’t carry with it the same emotional grip and lift of Jaws. Director J. Lee Thompson, a long way from Guns of Navarone and Cape Fear, just can’t seem to make it click. But up to that point it’s diverting enough, and I don’t mind sharing its company every now and then.
I can’t really say the same about The Reaping, which is one of those movies I kept meaning to see but never did, so much so that it wound up on one of the lists of movies I will see this year. I had a pretty religious upbringing. It didn’t stick, but I know my way around a Bible, and instances of God taking physical action in this world is one of the things that has continued to intrigue me.
So you have Hilary Swank playing a woman who was once an ordained minister, but after a tragedy during her missionary work – blamed for the local famine, her family was murdered/sacrificed to the local heathen gods – she has turned her back on religion, and now, in fact, is a professional debunker of modern miracles. It doesn’t take a scriptwriting genius to realize that her character has yes, lost her faith, but is searching, however unconsciously, for something to rekindle it – only to find scientific explanations for everything.
She – and her associate, played by Idris Elba (which gave me great hope) are called to a small Louisiana town where, apparently, the Old Testament Plagues of Pharoah are being played out. The river has turned to blood, there is a rain of frogs upon their arrival, cattle sicken and die – and blame is falling on a young girl from an outcast family on the edge of town. Swank, having lost her daughter to murder, is immediately conflicted.
The Reaping pulls out lots of gross stuff – instant maggots, lice (instead of gnats) boils, eventually a literal plague of locusts, while the viewer drums his fingers and waits for Swank to regain her faith or something. Eventually she pieces everything together and sorry, I’m not going to tell you what’s going on. It’s not really worth the trip, but why should I be the only one to suffer?
The movie wants to become The Omen in its final act, then actually manages to pull off a fairly decent twist… which is negated mere minutes later by one of the lamest final twists since Big Trouble in Little China. I sincerely hope it was included at the insistence of some clueless little studio weasel who sniveled that there had to be a final twist, every horror movie has a final twist. Mainly because I don’t need more reasons to hate director Stephen Hopkins, who also dropped Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child and the Lost in Space movie on us. He also did Predator 2, which I don’t hate, and The Ghost and the Darkness, which I really liked.
So screw you, nameless and probably fictional studio weasel. I hate you for that final twist. Hopkins, I glare at you for wasting a great cast like Hilary Swank, Idris Elba, David Morrissey and Stephen Rea, whose portion of the story makes no goddamn sensewhatsoever given that decent twist I mentioned earlier…which brings us to writers Corey and Chad Hayes, who are also responsible for the 2005 House of Wax movie, and that dreadful version of Whiteout that mangled a good story by Greg Rucka.
And then I just sort of lose the will to live and go to bed. I don’t mind watching crap, unless it’s listless, boring crap. I’m going to give some props to the production for sticking it out in Louisiana when Katrina interrupted their shoot, because they knew that the local economy could really use the cash infusion brought in by a film production. I just wish the end result had been more worthy of that suffering.
So now I find myself in a bit of a quandary; in the aforementioned lists, I still have 27 movies left to go before December 31st. That’s not impossible, except that my life is a patchwork of part-time jobs and nailing down time to watch movies is more of a challenge than it ought to be. Still in the realm of the doable. But. It’s October. Everybody else is having fun watching nothing but horror movies. On The Lists, there are five, possibly six movies that could be classified as horror if I stretch the definition a bit.
So I suppose if I watch those, it still brings me down to 21 movies, and that should give me some leeway to watch some horror movies that aren’t on The Lists, right? Right.
Phew. Thanks for your help, I really appreciate it.
It entertains me to find the pattern in things; they’re all around us, once you start finding them. I’m sure there’s some sort of perceptual Event Horizon that one can eventually cross with this sort of thing, where mere observation turns to insanity, but I haven’t quite crossed that threshold. I think.
One of these occurred to me just recently, when looking back over the previous few days, I realized I had just, without planning, taken in a weekend of French cinema. There are worse fates.
This gets kicked off last Thursday night, when I found myself waiting to watch a network TV show. This does not happen often. It was the premiere of CBS’ Elementary, and I have to give anything involving Sherlock Holmes a chance. (Okay, shortly: I liked Lucy Liu’s Watson, because I like it when the Watson character is actively involved in the story. I’m giving it another shot, even if I’m willing to toss the series under a bus for Jonny Lee Miller’s Sherlock talking during a live performance, because fuck people who do that)
I’ve never been able to get involved in Person of Interest, even though I really like Michael Emerson. A quick run around the dial revealed nothing of, um, interest (is it any wonder I don’t have cable?). The answer was upstairs, a Criterion Blu-Ray I had picked up a couple of weeks before at a used disc store, which contained Chris Marker’s La Jetee, which clocks in at a mere 27 minutes.
After a nuclear war, people are reduced to living in a series of tunnels under the city, Desperate scientists begin experimentation on prisoners of war, seeking to unlock a method of time travel which will allow them to acquire aid from either the past or the future. Our protagonist is perhaps the 40th or 50th person to be so experimented upon. He is given a high chance of success because he has an image indelibly burned into his mind: when he was a child, he was standing on an observation deck at an airport – the pier, or jetee of the title – where he saw a beautiful woman’s face seconds before a man in the crowd was shot and killed.
Using a method wisely left unexplained, the man begins to journey back to meet the woman for fleeting moments, visits which last longer and longer, until he is free to move about in the past. She accepts the oddness of his plight, referring to him as “her ghost”. At that point, he is sent into the future, to find if mankind has survived, and if they offer any information to help the struggling survivors of his present to reach their future safe point.
La Jetee is rightfully regarded as a masterpiece. Announcing itself as a “photo-roman“, it is composed almost entirely of black-and-white photos, appropriate for a story whose success depends upon the attachment of the protagonist to a single image. Once the viewer accepts this, the clarity and immediacy of photographs becomes the film’s strength. An associate of mine, looking at some photos I had taken with black-and-white film (which should tell you how long ago this was) remarked that there was something about black-and-white that made the images seem more significant. Whether or not this was because we were used to the regular monochrome of newspaper photography, I do not know – but the colorless worlds of La Jetee suit the doom-laden proceedings very well, and the single instance of a moving image provides a moment so laden with genuine significance and longing that it is perfect.
Yeah, I’m going to be the three millionth person to say La Jetee is brilliant.
You are lucky – you have already made the journey to the future, and La Jetee is available in its entirety on YouTube… in French. There is an English dub or two with iffy picture quality (yes, I have become quite the Blu-Ray snob), so you’ll have to make do with this excerpt:
The next evening it was only logical to follow up with the second movie on the Criterion disc, Sans Soleil, “Sunless” for those of you that flunked French. It’s named after a piece of music by Modest Mussorgsky, which is about the only clue you can hope for from me. Sans Soleil is the exact opposite of La Jetee: everything is movement and color. The female narrator reads letters from a globetrotting filmmaker, who goes unnamed until the final credits reveal him to be Sandor Krasna… who doesn’t exist.
Krasna’s letters obsess over memory and time, and a bunch of other things over a lot of footage of Japan in the late 70s-early 80s, occasionally zipping over to Africa and Iceland. It’s a dizzying kaleidoscope of cultural events, ephemera in odd places, snippets of Rintaro’s Galaxy Express 999, guerilla soldiers. The film opens with three girls on a country road in Iceland – the Narrator says that he will present only this footage bracketed by black frames, so the enduring image will be “happiness”. Only at the end of the movie does he reveal that the next day, a volcano will literally bury the girl’s village in ash.
Our fictitious filmmaker asks and ponders a lot of questions, philosophical eternals that have no real answers. Chris Marker is hard to pin down as an artist, a writer, what? The best suggestion has been to say he is an essayist working in film, and this is the greatest strength of Sans Soleil and its one downfall. It is fascinating in the way good documentaries are, engaging in the manner of late-night drunken philosophical discussions. What is maddening is that it demands multiple viewings to unpack what Marker is saying, if indeed it is possible to truly unpack it at all. Multiple viewings that would have been more possible with La Jetee‘s abbreviated running time, but not Sans Soleil‘s 103 minutes.
Yes, yes, movies should ideally exist in individual vacuums, without other movies brought in for comparison, but Sans Soleil downright invites this by spending some time visiting the shooting locations of Hitchcock’s Vertigo and mentioning the symbolic cross-section of the Sequoia was used in “one other film” – that film being La Jetee. Gah, like I said, this is a movie with ideas wrapped in images wrapped in reportage with a chewy philosophical nougat at its core.
And really, saying that you immediately need to watch a movie again to ponder its contents has to be one of the most specious complaints ever put to electronic paper.
Marker was quite the remarkable artist; I now find that he made a movie about Akira Kurosawa during the making of Ran, and I have moved that picture, AK, to the top of my list of Things To Track Down. His influence is unmistakable; the DNA of Sans Soleil is evident in movies like Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi, and given his noodling about with computerized solarization of footage in Sans Soleil, I can see his influence on Naqoyqatsi, which is a movie that almost rendered my teeth to flat nubbins, so much did I grind them during my viewing. So thank you, Chris, except for that part.
The last part of my unconscious French triple feature was Saturday morning, when I found myself all alone in the house with a soft rain outside. I finally plugged in my copy of Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast, and was a bit nonplussed to find myself underwhelmed.
I should quickly establish that this is all on me: I liked it alright, but I wanted to love it. Frankly, this is what happens when you are told for forty years that a movie is an enthralling, magical experience, until after those forty years you finally put out an effort to buy it and watch it, ’cause the only version offered to you most of your life was dire made-for-TV versions or had musical numbers.
I actually do not doubt the quality of the movie. It is well-made, and those scenes within the Beast’s palace are full of marvelous imagery, judicious use of slow motion, and the sort of dream logic that could fall flat in less-capable hands. The Beast’s makeup is superb, and Jean Marais’ eyes beautifully emotive. The one technical problem I have is the overly-bombastic score.
Well, no, I also find the denouement troublesome, as the Beast’s cure left me a severe case of what-the-hell’s, what with Avenant’s death – which I don’t really think was deserved – and Belle’s lack of concern for the death of a fellow she had confessed a fondness for… But by then, I was really ready for it to be over, and not a little cranky.
Again, I can see the movie’s quality, and I can certainly see the influence it has exerted over a half-century and more of fantasy cinema… but whether it was my mood, or alignment of the stars, or if I had been promised the be-all of romantic fantasy movies and what I found was a 1947 black-and-white movie… well, we’ll never know. But I will say all three of these movies are worth watching, and while your mileage may vary, grumpy old me could see their quality and value.
I mean, look at this stuff, it’s beautiful. What is my problem?
There was a period in my youthful life when my family moved to Del Rio, Texas, so my father could be closer to his major construction job and still have a family. Moving around at that age is tough, but there was one good thing about it: TV from San Antonio, and the local CBS affiliate, who had a regular horror movie every Friday night in a slot called Project: Terror. I got a fair amount of early tutelage on that show, and I really, really miss the days when TV station regularly had such niche programming on late night weekends.
I offer that bit of biographical data by way of introducing today’s subject, which is an unusual series of daikaiju (giant monster) movies from 1966, known as The Daimajin Trilogy. The first movie, Daimajin was unfolded before my fourth grade eyes under the title, Majin, Monster of Terror, under the (likely true) assumption that no American would watch something called Daimajin. At least not in 1968.
Let me try to briefly explain what makes the Daimajin movies so unusual: they take place not in the modern day, but possibly during the Sengoku historical period between the late 15th and early 16th century, judging from the backdrop of clashing feudal lords and presence of matchlock rifles. It’s the marriage of jidaigeki period drama and giant monster movies that make them so alluring – that and the monster in question is a rampaging, wrathful god.
This was also one of the things that 10 year-old me did not care for in the first movie – you had to sit through 90 minutes of samurai movie (in Project: Terror‘s two hour slot) to get to 15 minutes of stone god rampage. I’m (quite) a bit older now, and can appreciate things for what they are. If I do things like forgive the Rambo movies for 70 minutes of bad guys proving why they need to be Rambo-ized before I get 20 minutes of Rambo making bad-guy soup out of them, then I can’t very well criticize the Daimajin movies for doing the same thing.
Starting off with Daimajin (you can add the “Monster of Terror” part if you like), a series of earthquakes causes villagers to hold an impromptu festival/dance/ritual to appease the “Majin of the Mountain”. Under the cover of this festival, an evil Chamberlain stages a coup of the nice local lord. The Lord’s son and daughter escape, eventually settling in near the statue of Majin, an area superstitiously forbidden.
Ten years pass for the New Evil Lord to be evil and generally grind the faces of the poor. The son, now 18, tries to go back to the castle, gets captured, and is scheduled for execution. Having had enough of this Majin nonsense, Lord Evil sends some men to break up the stone statue. They get as far as hammering a big spike into its forehead before they stop, because blood is pouring from the statue’s forehead. The fearful men try to escape, but the earth literally opens up and swallows them.
The former lord’s daughter, who had been captured by the doomed demolition crew, sees this as proof of the Majin’s role as an active god, and offers her life to it if Majin will only save her brother. The stone statue comes to life, and there begins one of the better giant monster sequences of the period.
Waaaaay back in the days when we used a medium called “videotape” to enjoy our movies, ADV Films put out a widescreen VHS of this movie, and good gravy, what a difference that made (I am, incidentally, basing this on the recent Mill Creek Blu-Ray of the Trilogy, which is astounding in quality)! I think Daimajin is one of the first Daiei Studio movies made in the Vista Vision format, and that widescreen is used beautifully throughout. The forced perspective and occasional back projection are flawless, and often breathtaking; this is really some stunning stuff. I could babble all day about it, but basically: it has to be seen.
The second movie, Return of Daimajin (there was a weird mix-up in the names of the movies at some point, so I’m using the title Mill Creek employed), follows the usual sequel route by doing everything bigger: the Evil Lord takes over not one, but two peaceful castles, there are two male heirs in play, and Majin – this time on an island in the middle of a lake – is blown up with black powder. Once again, when the chips are down, and the daughter of one of the deceased Lords is about to be burnt at the stake, she offers her life to Majin, who literally parts the lake like the Red Sea to tromp out and proceed to smish all the bad guys.
The third, Daimajin Strikes Back (which I’ve always known as Wrath of Daimajin, but now my head hurts), shakes up the formula. Majin, apparently tired of being rousted by idiot Evil Lords, has taken to the top of a mountain. An Evil General is kidnapping men from surrounding villages and using them as slave labor to build his fortress and munitions factory near a sulfur lake. This time, our heroes are four boys from a village who trek over Majin’s mountain in an effort to save their fathers and brothers. Also, Majin has an “avatar”, a hawk that flies around and observes everything.
Saddling four child actors with the hero role could have been disastrous, but the result isn’t totally terrible (thankfully). They have some fairly good kid’s adventure stuff going on, escaping from three Evil Samurai over and over again. Our lead kid is a fairly decent actor, which is good, because lacking a Lord’s Daughter character, he’s the one who offers to sacrifice himself to Majin if the god will just save all the others.
Majin has his most extended rampage in this outing, and it is one of the most visually arresting, taking place during a snow storm. The General has cannons at his disposal, which turn out to be predictably useless. And we find out that the sword that Majin has been carrying throughout the trilogy is practical and has a steel blade.
As a whole, the Daimajin trilogy is a nice change of pace for giant monster fans. Though the daikaiju formula here is even more heavily-weighted toward the Big Finish than is usual in most of the giant monster movies, the change in venue is intriguing enough to offset that. The special effects are consistently better than other Daiei monster offerings (sorry, I was never a Gamera fan), and, perhaps harkening back to my upbringing as a Southern Baptist, I can really get into the concept of a god who actually does something… like grinding bad guys to a pulp. Reactionary of me, I know, but I do have my fantasies.
I can tell that the School Year has truly begun, because my wife and child have started bringing home all the latest plagues. Outside of dousing them with boiling water and bleach when they come home, there’s not much I can do except avoid them as much as possible, and hope my wife doesn’t cough on me too much at night.
I know what I like to watch when I’m sick: kung fu movies are my comfort food. But I’m not there yet, so I’m assuaging the tickle in my throat and my occasional dizziness with documentaries.
Documentaries aren’t my usual cup of tea, you know. Oh, I can watch pretty Blu-Rays of wilderness all day long, but I seem rarely interested in pushing the button on real life adventures. In my current state of health limbo I don’t want to get riled up by life injustices or embarrassed by eccentrics being brought up short by the real world.
So, Stop Number One on my Netflix Instant queue: Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles. The basis for this is one of those pieces of true-life high weirdness I enjoy: there are a series of tiles embedded into roadways in the American Northeast that read: “Toynbee Idea/in movie 2001/resurrect dead/on Planet Jupiter” or variations thereof. There are often side panels that dangle tantalizing clues. These things have also cropped up in South America.
The primary character of Jon Foy’s movie is Justin Duerr, an artist who first noticed the tiles in the early 90s while working as a foot courier. In those early days of the Internet, he eventually finds a small community of people trying to figure out just what the hell is going on, and finally winds up with his own little Mystery Inc. of three guys who are equally obsessed with what the tiles mean, and who’s been making and placing them.
This tale of amateur sleuthery is engaging, and it all seems to point in the direction of one individual, a virtual hermit in a Philadelphia neighborhood. All attempts to contact him are ignored, and eventually Duerr, convinced that he has shared a transit bus with the perpetrator, still decides to let the man walk away unbothered. “Let him go his way in peace, and let me go in mine,” says Duerr, who closes this chapter of his life and goes on to the next. The other two, we are told, are still investigating the phenomenon, especially the many copycats who have surfaced in recent years.
Resurrect Dead remains interesting and focused for most of its runtime; an occasional digression keeps it from being too Lone Gunmen in tenor, and seeing the guys’ detective work actually bear fruit is satisfying.
Next up was a recommendation by my friend Rick: Into Great Silence, which is about the monks of the Grande Chartreuse, a monastery deep in the French Alps. These monks have sworn a Vow of Silence, theoretically using their voices only in prayer or song; this proves to be pretty flexible, as they are also apparently allowed to converse during their weekly recreational hikes. Being monks, they talk about monk stuff – you know, religion, ritual.
One of the conceits of Into Great Silence is that there is no narration, no commentary, no incidental music. Your experience is going to be just as silent as that of the monks. It is worth noting that this has the effect of making prayer and ecumenical chants that much more moving.
It also means that there are many times the viewer is left wondering just what the heck is going on at several points; simple tasks take on an aura of mystery. Never introduced to any of the monks, we are left to our own devices to sort out who they are, and what their duties in the monastery may be. My personal favorite is the bearded monk, shoulder stooped in old age, out in the winter, shoveling snow off his vegetable plots… and, while limping away from his work, still able to direct a friendly smile at the camera. Truthfully, it is the day-to-day life, the background work that keeps the monastery running, that I find fascinating. Especially the monk going over the monastery’s accounts, using a laptop.
In the final titles of the movie, director Philip Groning tells that he first approached the Grande Chartreuse in 1984, and the response was basically, “Not right now, give us a chance to get ready”. Sixteen years later, he got a second letter, “Okay, we’re ready.” That sort of deliberate pace carries over into the movie; be aware that once you hit play you are in for a two hour and forty minute stint with the monks.
The running time has a purpose, I think. The other continuing motif is a series of intertitles with excerpts from prayers. I didn’t keep count, but there seems to be six or seven, and they repeat themselves throughout the running time. The length of the movie and the repetition serve to bring home the extent of the commitment of the monks; we’re going home to TVs and the Internet after almost three hours, but this is how the monks will spend a lifetime.
Even after spending six months with the monks, Groning apparently still has the ability to experience boredom, as several times he chooses to switch to a lower resolution, and process a shot in a grainier fashion. I’m going to shrug at that. It’s not really necessary – but then, it could be argued that two hours and forty minutes isn’t truly necessary either. Although that slow build-up makes seeing normally silent monks shouting “Whee!” as they sled down a snowy slope all the sweeter.
So, my busy week got a little less busy when one of the city meetings was cancelled. I made some snap decisions about movie watching.
First I checked out Films of Fury on Netflix Instant. It’s based on Ric Meyer’s book of the same name, which is about martial arts movies. I will give the movie props for pointing out that Buster Keaton and Gene Kelly were superb athletes, doing their utmost for their craft; not really sure if what they did could truly be called kung fu, but hey, it was a fair point. The movie also manages to work in the fight scene in From Russia With Love before getting to the meat of the matter, the Chinese martial arts movie.
The only real problem with documentaries like this crops up if you’re already a fan of the material. Fists of Fury does a really good job of hitting the high points and avoiding the low in its accelerated history, highlighting the major players, directors and plot points (I would have liked to have had a dollar for every time the world “revenge” is used). I spent most of the running time thinking “Damn, but I want to see that movie again!” The Flash animation interstitials are amusing but disposable.
If, however, you’re curious about the genre and haven’t had that much experience, it will provide you with an excellent list of where to start.
I picked the next movie almost at random. Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. My kid is a big Ghost Rider fan, so its purchase was necessary. Especially when I found the Blu-Ray for cheap.
The great thing about second movies in these superhero franchises is that the origin story can be dealt with in three sentences and we can get on with the rest of the movie. (Hell, The Incredible Hulk did it under the opening credits, which was a smooth economic move). Staring 50 in the face, Nic Cage may be getting a bit old to pull off Johnny Blaze, but he can still break off major pieces of the scenery with his teeth and chew them up like few other actors will even attempt, and directors Mark Nevaldine and Brian Taylor – also responsible for the frenetic Crank movies – probably had script pages that were blank except for the words NIC GOES NUTS HERE.
The plot’s not going to dazzle you with originality: the same Devil whom Blaze made his original deal with has sired a son, and the kid is necessary for a ritual that will cement Old Scratch’s power on Earth. A radical sect offers Blaze a counter-deal: if he can find the boy and bring him safely to their Sanctuary, they will undo his satanic pact and separate him from the Rider.
Nevaldine and Taylor have a dizzying visual style they perfected in those Crank movies and is put to dazzling use here; their best addition to the Rider mythos is that any mechanical device the Rider controls is imbued with Hellfire, so we not only get to see the stock flaming motorcycle, but at one point, a flaming strip miner. The cast they put together is pretty fine, too; we find ourselves rooting for Idris Elba very early in the movie, then we get surprised by Anthony Head and Christopher Lambert.
Not stellar entertainment, but satisfying. Worth the rental for fans of frantic action, over-the-top performances, and pyrotechnics.
In any book or article about Hong Kong movies in general, or Asian horror movies in particular, you’re going to run into Black Magic (1975) a lot. This was an attempt to catch the wave of Western horror that was sweeping the markets in the wake of The Exorcist, a movie that moved HK cinema beyond ghost stories and into the land of the extreme. Black Magic kicks off a cinematic trend that would eventually lead to outrageous stuff like Centipede Horror and Seeding of a Ghost. As I started exploring Asian cinema in the early 90s, I had to take what I could get, so Seeding was one of my first experiences; it’s no wonder that Black Magic seems tame by comparison.
Well, enough of that, though. In the big city, a youthful Ti Lung plays an architect who is being stalked by an incredibly horny (but rich) widow played by Lily Li. Ti wants nothing to do with her though, planning to marry his sweetheart. When a spurned gigolo (played by Lo Lieh, no less) hires the Black Magician to put a love spell on Lilly so he can get his hands on her money, Black accurately sizes up the Gigolo’s character and only applies a one-night spell. Lilly forces the Gigolo to tell her about the Black Magician, and visits him to place the Architect under her spell for a year. The love spell is applied on his wedding day, and Ti leaves his bride at the reception.
The trappings of the various spells are intriguing: pieces of corpses, human breast milk, centipedes (White has the best line when Ti Lung is recovering from his first bout of bewitchment: “Feed him these centipedes in the morning. He’ll come to his senses for a while.”). The structure is a bit repetitive, though, with Ti under the spell, then rescued, then put under the spell again, to pad out the running time. The climactic battle between the Black and White Magicians is supposed to wow you, of course, with Black pulling out all sorts of skull mirrors and a rotting head that shoots green laser beams, but all it really does is convince you that William Girdler saw it while working out the ending for The Manitou all cartoon ray blasts and lightning. As the first of its kind, it commands some respect, but make sure you see it before any of its weirder and grosser and more insane progeny.
Disturbed Mexican-American War veteran Boyd (Guy Pearce) is exiled to Fort Spencer, a remote, ramshackle frontier outpost populated by damaged individuals. He arrives just in time for a horror story from a bedraggled refugee (Robert Carlyle) whose wagon train, trapped in winter storms, turned to cannibalism. The commanding officer (Jeffrey Jones) states, rightly enough, “This is what we’re here for,” and leads most of the fort – five men – to investigate. Things go rather downhill for everyone from there, and half the fun of Ravenous is watching these berserk circumstances develop.
It was like watching that episode of Chuck Norris Karate Kommandos that presents voodoo black magic, including voodoo dolls and zombies, to be absolutely real, which is not the sort of thing you expect in a children’s cartoon. That sort of disconnect.
Nicolas Cage plays the appropriately named John Milton, a hardass felon who breaks out of Hell because the Satanic cult who murdered his daughter is now planning to sacrifice his infant granddaughter during the next full moon. Milton teams up with Piper (Amber Heard). a similarly hardass ex-waitress who’s not afraid to throw a punch or shoot a gun. Besides the apparently limitless number of murderous cult members standing in his way, there’s also the small matter of a demon named The Accountant (William Fichtner, who is having a grand time) sent to bring Milton back to Hell. Fortunately, Milton also stole an arcane weapon called The Godkiller…
If I have two cavils about Drive Angry, it’s these: the movie seems to owe a debt to author Richard Kadrey’s punk-occult-neo-noir Sandman Slim novels; and the sex-during-a-gun-fight scene was done in one of my other favorite stupid over-the-top action movies, Shoot ‘Em Up. Then, Hollywood has always rather been like Ravenous, anyway: constantly eating its dead. So why I should be surprised to find DNA from other movies is a measure of my naiveté, I suppose.
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