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13-nin Renzoku Boukouma

September 7th, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
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a.k.a. 13-Victim Serial Attacker / Serial Rapist
Year: 1978   Company: Shin-Toho Film Company   Runtime: 60′
Director: Koji Wakamatsu   Writers: Koji Wakamatsu    Cinematography: Hideo Ito
Music: Kaoru Abe   Cast: Kumiko Araki, Mayuko Hino, Kayoko Sugi, Maya Takagi, Ami Takatori, Tensan Umatsu

Ferociously independent writer and director Koji Wakamatsu (United Red Army, Secrets Behind the Wall) has never been one to trifle over the social acceptability of his work, and is well known for his combination of sociopolitical commentary and extreme sex and violence.  Even with that in mind this is a tough one.  Wakamatsu’s 1978 obscurity 13-Victim Serial Attacker concerns a troubled young man who bikes around Tokyo on a seemingly meaningless quest to rape and murder any young woman he finds.  It’s a bleak, discouraging film that offers neither justification nor excuses for its content, and though broadly categorized as “pink” erotica and even horror, trying to classify it as entertainment of any sort is missing the point.

Thematically 13-Victim Serial Attacker can be seen as a direct offshoot of Wakamatsu’s earlier Secrets Behind the Wall, which focused partly on the rise of a homicidal sexual deviant in an anonymous Japanese apartment complex.  Indeed, an early montage of endless indistinguishable apartment buildings echos the past film nicely.  13-Victim Serial Attacker‘s simple and repetitive narrative follows a similarly misguided youth, but perhaps misguided isn’t the word.  Unguided may be more apt.  Shuffling aimlessly about the banal artifices of postwar prosperity, the attitude of the unnamed offender speaks as much of boredom and time-fed anxiety as it does of psychopathy.

The opening moments of the film have our unnamed and overweight protagonist whittling together a custom firearm in a rundown metal works before stuffing it into his omnipresent overalls and speeding off on his bicycle.  He soon finds himself in an apartment complex, where he picks a tenant at random and infiltrates her home by pretending to be a policeman.  Once inside he viciously assaults the inhabitant, a young stay-at-home wife, raping her until he reaches a hollow satisfaction and then unloading his firearm into her uterus.  The brief opening credits fade in over a static shot of her sad remains, sprawled bloody and lifeless and treated with all the respect one might grant a heap of dirty laundry.  When we meet up with the young man again he is wandering around Tokyo Bay, killing time before an opportunity to strike once again arises.

The rest of 13-Victim Serial Attacker follows in a similar vein, as our anonymous assailant happens upon victim after victim, many of whom seem at least as adrift as himself.  A pair of hot-headed lovers near a commuter line, a young artist by the sea, and a host of faceless others are needlessly attacked and murdered in spaces as small as automobiles or public restrooms and as expansive as undeveloped industrial land.  Wakamatsu shows grim imagination in some of the assaults, as when a prostitute and her gent are tied back-to-back by their limbs before the attacker begins his deadly business.  The director also incites reaction from his audience through his brutal and honest depictions of rape, with several of the victims appearing to enjoy themselves as they seek a respite from the violence in the fleeting comfort of sexual arousal.

The most substantial development of the film again echos an earlier Wakamatsu production, as the nameless creature at the story’s center captures a policewoman and holds her hostage in an abandoned warehouse, assaulting her again and again.  The narrative thread reminds strongly of the director’s first independent production, The Embryo Hunts in Secret, in which a well to do businessman takes a female associate hostage and forces her into a variety of degrading subservient behaviors.  That film, which speaks of the oppressive nature of power and the necessity of rebellion, offers the audience a satisfyingly gruesome out.  Here there is nothing of the kind.  After the policewoman misbehaves, nearly drawing the police into her kidnapper’s hideaway, he simply draws his gun and shoots her.  She ends her appearance like so many others, as another statistic to be rattled off on the radio news.

Throughout 13-Victim Serial Attacker the audience is given very little in the way of insight into the character’s reasoning, and the purpose of his actions remains elusive.  When his final victim, a young blind woman, asks him if he enjoys killing he responds as honestly as he likely can – “I don’t know.”  When she summarily asks if why he kills he has no answer for her at all.  Oddly, the only understanding the audience is really allowed to develop for the eponymous serial attacker comes by way of the film’s score, a collection of sparse avante-garde improvisations by renowned alto saxophonist Kaoru Abe, who would die later the same year of a drug overdose.  The harshness of Abe’s performances evoke sensations of loneliness and interminable angst, while a brief encounter between the attacker and Abe, in cameo, draws a rare emotional reaction, a single tearful eye, from the former.

13-Victim Serial Attacker ends abruptly, and with violence every bit as sudden and needless as the rest.  With the police unable to stop him the army (!?) is called into action, and an unstoppable social monster meets the irresistible force of military intervention.  As the sun literally sets on our protagonist’s violent spree, a solitary jeep lies in ambush.  Their meeting is torrid and bloody, and as the unknown man dies his voice fades into the inhuman shriek of Abe’s saxophone.  Wakamatsu’s parting shots recall the opening scene, with the man’s bullet-riddled body floating in Tokyo Bay, the army having left it behind as though it were nothing more than an innocuous bit of garbage.  Its a final act of inhumanity in a film overflowing with them, and Wakamatsu leaves the audience to contemplate its consequence.

As a brutal example of Wakamatsu’s rebellious cinematic spirit 13-Victim Serial Attacker is striking, with exceptional photography from ace cinematographer Hideo Ito (In the Realm of the Senses, here working in cost-effective 16mm) and haunting musical contributions from the late Kaoru Abe.  Its capacity to offend also ranks higher than just about anything else I’ve had the pleasure to cover here, though with Wakamatsu one should always expect a little confrontation.  Those with a hankering for a bit of intellectual pursuit will find the most satisfaction here, while those looking for a good night out would do best to avoid Wakamatsu all together.

And now, a brief note on the title used here.  13-Victim Serial Attacker is my own rough translation from the original Japanese title.  The more common translation of Serial Rapist just isn’t accurate, eliminating the numerical beginning and lending the word boukouma (literally something like “habitual act of violence”) a more precise meaning than it seems to have.  The word nin that follows the number 13 literally means “man” or “person”, and has been translated here as “victim” since these are the people that the word is, in this case, referring to.  Keep in mind that I am in no way trained in the Japanese language, but in the absence of a suitable official English title for this rarely seen film I have done my best.  Whine if you must.

MST3K: “Manos” The Hands of Fate Special Edition

September 1st, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
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includes: ep 424 “Manos” The Hands of Fate  Year: 1993  Company: Best Brains   Runtime: 97′
Cast: Joel Hodgson, Trace Beaulieu, Kevin Murphy, Frank Conniff, Jim Mallon, Michael J. Nelson, Mary Jo Phel
Disc company: Shout! Factory   Video: 480i 4:3    Audio: Dolby Digital 2.0 English
Subtitles: None   Disc: DVD9 (2)   Release Date: 09/13/2011   Product link: Amazon.com
Reviewed from a screener provided by Shout! Factory LLC. Thanks guys!

Here it is, folks – the most legendary episode of the cult television hit Mystery Science Theater 3000 is back, and the experiment is every bit as stupid as ever.  I suspect that I need not espouse the comedic virtues of series episode 424 “Manos” The Hands of Fate to anyone reading this article, and I won’t.  Frankly, I wouldn’t even know where to start, but those not in the know should rest assured that this episode has certainly earned its reputation for being the defining moment of the series.  Previously available in decade-old VHS and DVD editions from Rhino Video, cult video wunderkinds Shout! Factory have now seen fit to give “Manos” The Hands of Fate the duluxe DVD treatment.  God help us all.

Evidently sourced from the original broadcast master, episode 424 “Manos” The Hands of Fate is presented interlaced in its original 4:3 aspect ratio on disc one of this 2-disc set.  As has been the case with past Shout! Factory MST3K offerings, I suspect this presentation looks just about as good as it ever will.  Colors are vibrant and well saturated, and contrast and detail are at as high a level as one could ever expect from a television show produced on video in the early ’90s.  The audio, presented in the standard Dolby Digital 2.0 format, sounds just fine, and my only complaint with the presentation is the lack of subtitles.

  
  

Disc one continues with a slight but appreciated smattering of supplemental material.  First up is Group Therapy (18 minutes), in which the several of those involved in episode 424 (Joel Hodgson, Frank Conniff, Trace Beaulieu and Mary Jo Phel)  gather for a friendly backyard chat about the episode’s production and the film itself.  The conversation is very laid back and informal compared to the standard interview format for such things, and I enjoyed it quite a bit.  A collection of Mystery Science Theater Hour wraps for the episode (5 minutes) round out disc one, which just nudges into dual layer territory at 4.8 GB.  The disc menus are, as ever, hilarious, with an animated Crow and Tom Servo wisecracking as characters from the film make appearances.  Good stuff.

Disc two of the MST3K: “Manos” The Hands of Fate Special Edition plunges viewers into the deepest depths of cinematic awfulness, presenting the unvarnished original “Manos” The Hands of Fate for all to suffer.  A brief word of caution – “Manos” The Hands of Fate is every bit as dreadful as you could possibly imagine, and quite probably worse.  Produced, written, directed by and starring ego-centric insurance and fertilizer salesman Harold P. Warren, who purportedly began the project as reaction to a bet with acclaimed screenwriter Stirling Silliphant, this is undeniably some of the worst of worst that American cinema has to offer.  Thanks to Shout! Factory you can now witness the shock, the horror, and one of film’s greatest abuses of leitmotif on your own – if you dare.

I had relatively high hopes for the untouched “Manos” The Hands of Fate on this disc, having seen over and over what kind of transfers Shout! are capable of through their tremendous line of Roger Corman titles, but no dice.  “Manos” looks positively horrid here, sourced from an aged tape master of what looks to have itself been sourced from an already terrible 16mm television print.  Interlaced, soft, dark and muddy, “Manos” appears worse for wear here than it does in the complementing episode, a monumental feat in and of itself.  If looking for something abysmal with which to torment your friends, this may well be the best thing out there.  Audio, presented in grubby Dolby Digital 2.0 English, sounds every bit as painful as it has in the past, and possibly a little worse.  There are no subtitles.

  

Where disc two really takes off is in its own supplemental department.  First up is the excellent documentary and interview piece Hotel Torgo (27 minutes), in which a handful of documentarians descend upon El Paso, TX to try and piece together just what transpired there and why some 40 years before.  Interviewed are “Manos” historian Richard Brandt and Bernie Rosenblum, photographer, co-star and stunt coordinator for the film.  The brief documentary also revisits various shooting locations, most notably the rundown remains of the hotel that serves as the setting, and a revival screening of the film.  I thought this was an exceptional piece, and while I’m unsure of whether it has ever been released before I am happy to see it here.

The remainder of the supplements pertain to those frequent secondary targets of MST3K - bizarre educational shorts.  First up is Hired! (Parts 1 and 2 together again) (18 minutes), which combines the MST3K treatment of the Jam Handy Organization short that was originally spread across two episodes.  The short follows the troubles of a Chevy salesman whose under-staff just aren’t performing as well as they should.  Humorous montages, strange conversation and head towels ensue.  Not included is the original un-mocked version of the short, which can be found quite readily at Archive.org.  Next up is My (Educational) Short Life (8 minutes), in which Joel Hodgson is interviewed with regards to the shorts that frequently appeared on MST3K, and the Jam Handy Organization films in particular.

 

The strangest supplement of the bunch is Jam Handy to the Rescue! (23 minutes), a co-production between Shout! Factory and featurette producer Ballyhoo Pictures that brings alleged writer, comedian and actor Larry Blamire together with ephemeral film history.  Half parody, half documentary, Jam Handy to the Rescue mixes archival footage and newly produced faux-educational short trappings to present details of the life and times of former Olympic athlete and commercial film pioneer Henry Jamison “Jam” Handy in a manner that, while awkward, seems rather appropriate.  I’m still not a Blamire convert, but I found this far more watchable than any of his own films and informative to boot.  Bloopers from the production (2 minutes) as well as a fake television spot for the film-within-a-film Look Over round out disc two.

Shout! Factory’s MST3K: “Manos” The Hands of Fate Special Edition packs nearly three hours of supplemental material in addition to one of the series’ very best episodes, making it one of the company’s most attractive television releases to date.  Though I suspect that no true MSTie is without “Manos” in their collection already, the wealth of material here coupled with a decent price tag ($24.97, but far less through most retailers) may render an upgrade irresistible.  Recommended!

in conclusion
Show: Excellent  Video: Very Good   Audio: Very Good   Supplements: Excellent
Harrumphs: No subtitles
Packaging: Clear 2-disc DVD case, with mini-poster recreation of cover art.
Final Words: The irresistible force of MST3K met the immovable awfulness of “Manos” The Hands of Fate nearly 20 years ago, but the end result is still a blast.  This Shout! Factory special edition packs a considerable supplemental wallop, and comes highly recommended to fans.

Tokyo Sonata

August 29th, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
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Year: 2008  Company: Fortissimo Films / Entertainment Farm   Runtime: 120′
Director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa   Writers: Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Max Mannix, Sachiko Tanaka
Cinematography: Akiko Ashizawa   Music: Kazumasa Hashimoto  Cast: Teruyuki Kagawa, Kyoko Koizumi,
Yu Koyanagi, Kai Inowaki, Haruka Igawa, Kanji Tsuda, Kazuya Kojima, Koji Yakusho, Jaosn Gray
Disc company: Eureka! / Masters of Cinema Series   Video: 1080p 1.85:1
Audio: Dolby TrueHD 2.0 Japanese,  DTS-HD MA 2.0 Japanese, Dolby Digital 2.0 Japanese
Subtitles: English   Disc: BD50 (All Region)   Release Date: 06/22/2009
Available for purchase through Amazon.com

Note: Due to the Sony DADC warehouse fire in London earlier this month the majority of the back-stock for Tokyo Sonata was destroyed.  Eureka / Masters of Cinema are in the process of repressing this, along with many of the other titles whose stock was lost, as combination DVD / Blu-ray editions.  Ignore any indications you may find of this title being out of print (including exorbitant Amazon and eBay marketplace prices1) – it will be back.

There’s one brilliant moment among the many in Tokyo Sonata that stands out to me on every viewing.  As the unemployed businessman father of the story’s central family waits in line at a work placement center, his similarly unemployed businessman friend turns to him and confesses that his wife, from whom he has been hiding his joblessness, is beginning to suspect.  ”I have to find a way to make her trust me2,” he says, before concocting a faked business dinner to bolster the illusion that his life is continuing as usual.  The thought of telling her the truth, and thus accepting his own condition, never crosses his mind.

This brief scene is the crux of Tokyo Sonata, to date the last film from Kiyoshi Kurosawa (best known in the West for his allegorical horror features Cure and Kairo), a film that inhabits a world all too familiar, in which familial communication has broken down and mistrust is the order of the day.  Kurosawa’s knack for developing a lurking sense of unease serves him well here, where he effortlessly transposes it onto the mundane verisimilitude of a traditional family drama.  It’s easy to separate oneself from the surreal threats posed by homicidal mesmerists or ghostly blotches of human grease, but Tokyo Sonata dwells on the far less sensational horrors of everyday life, and is all the more affecting for it.

Set contemporaneously and reflecting a time of growing threats to the family unit (a global economic recession, the war on terror, and the age-old problem of career centrism), Tokyo Sonata follows the implosion and subsequent transcendental rise of the Sasaki family.  One stormy morning father Ryuhei (the excellent Teruyuki Kagawa, Serpent’s Path) is unceremoniously ejected from his administrative position, the price of the outsourcing of his department to nearby China.  Finding himself suddenly astray, with the career upon which he built his identity only a memory, Ryuhei desperately attempts to keep up appearances, spending his regular hours waiting in the long lines at the local work placement center and taking charity lunches alongside the city’s homeless population.

At home Ryuhei’s veneer of authority begins to crack, as his relationship with both his wife and two children continues a steady deterioration set in motion long before his job was lost.  Housewife Megumi (Kyoko Koizumi) itches to express herself from beyond the confines of her daily routine, while wayward older son Takashi (Yu Koyanagi) tries to find his place in life through a series of dead-end jobs.  Meanwhile younger son Kenji (Kai Inowaki in his acting debut), failing to find a place for himself in a traditional school system in which he and his instructor are constantly at each other’s throats, develops an unexpected interest in learning to play the piano.  With his social position lost and the possibility of matching his former position practically non-existent, Ryuhei takes out his frustrations on those from whom he should be seeking support.  He ignores his wife, argues with Takashi and categorically denies Kenji’s request to learn the piano, driving the three of them further and further from him in the process.

  
  
  

As Ryuhei’s attempts at domination increase each of his family members begin their own private rebellions against it.  Takashi, in seeking a direction for his life, joins the military and becomes embroiled in a conflict in the Middle East.  Megumi earns her driver’s license, an expensive privilege, and begins window shopping for both a car and an escape.  Kenji finds a dysfunctional keyboard in a garbage heap and learns to use it as best he can, and stashes his monthly lunch allowance away for secret piano lessons.  All the while tension between the four is growing, and Ryuhei, finding himself trading administrative work for the degrading position of shopping center janitor, seems poised for a violent outburst…

Tokyo Sonata comprises some of the most absurdly horrifying imagery of Kurosawa’s career, imagery whose impact is heightened by the uncomfortable reality it represents.  As Ryuhei wanders through the streets of Tokyo he finds a whole disaffected population of the similarly lost, hordes of former businessmen who have defined themselves by their careers and who now waste away the working hours in public libraries, city parks and charity lunch lines.  The impact of the visuals here is near universal – who can’t relate to losing a job, and the sense of “what now?” hopelessness that so often comes along with it?  Tokyo Sonata also plumbs the unsettling depths to which that hopelessness can drag us all, from the development of self-destructive personalities to the grim finality of suicide.  It is in these moments, in which the lows are at their lowest, that the film proves most unsettling.  As Ryuhei becomes overtly abusive the final thread that holds his family together is ripped away – Kenji attempts to run away, but falls afoul of the law, while Megumi turns an attempted home invasion into an unlikely opportunity for escape…

But with the future at its most uncertain and the Sasaki family in its darkest hour, the sun both proverbially and literally rises – the Kurosawan equivalent of “…tomorrow is another day!”.  The reconciliation of Tokyo Sonata never feels cheap or manipulative, and avoids the happy family cliches of similar efforts.  Instead, at the height of their irresponsibility, the individual members of the Sasaki find themselves, and realize in no uncertain terms that which they are at risk of losing.  Ryuhei and his wife cease to strive for happiness in what they don’t have, and instead find contentedness in what they do, while son Kenji offers a moment of uncompromising beauty – a soulful piano recitation of Debussy’s Claire de Lune.  It’s the concept of mono no aware in action, a fleeting moment of transcendental bliss that’s all the more impacting for the ugliness that preceded it.

There are those who tout Tokyo Sonata as Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s masterpiece, and given the wealth of awards and praise it has garnered I can hardly argue with them.  It is certainly his most accessible film to date, presenting a universal story of familial progression with neither the ambivalence or ambiguity that has marked so much of his prior work.  And while the existential themes familiar to his career are present and accounted for, from the obscure nature of identity to the issues of communication posed by modern society, the end results are all together different.  Bleak as the world of Tokyo Sonata may be, the sun still rises on it and the birds still sing, and its ugliness, like all things, is transient.

  
  
  

Limited to DVD-only editions both domestically and in its native Japan, Kiyoshi Kurosawaw’s award-winning Tokyo Sonata has been given its due respect in a phenomenal Blu-ray edition courtesy of Eureka! Entertainment’s Masters of Cinema series.  Though produced in the United Kingdom I’m pleased to report that this edition of the film is ALL REGION compatible, with even the standard definition supplements rendered in a globally digestible NTSC format, leaving nothing in the way of excuses for why anyone shouldn’t have it in their collection.

Presented in full 1080p for the first time anywhere in the world, Tokyo Sonata is granted a properly framed 1.85:1 transfer and a healthy AVC encode (average video bitrate is 29.4 Mbps) in its Blu-ray debut.  The two hour feature is spread across just over 30 Gb of a dual layer BD50, and the results are both impressive and honest.  After toying with digital filming technology in Doppelganger, Bright Future and Loft, Kurosawa and ace director of photography Akiko Ashizawa have returned to 35mm photography, and I couldn’t be happier.  The imagery here is rich in both real world detail and the untouched texture of the medium itself, a 1-2 combination that I can’t help but love.  Contrast is at healthy levels throughout, as is the intentionally limited color palette.  This won’t be the most vibrant or demo-worthy transfer you’ve seen, and there’s even some printed film damage (specks and a few larger marks) to contend with, but the image remains honest to the source photography throughout.  I suspect this is a reference-level transfer for the title in question, and it retains its deliciously filmic qualities even when the image is zoomed-in to 200-300% its intended size.  Those looking for complaints will find none here today – this one looks precisely as it should.

Eureka present Tokyo Sonata with not one but two HD audio choices in the original 2.0 Japanese – a variable bitrate Dolby TrueHD track at around 600-800 kbps, and a DTS-HD MA option at around 1.7 Mbps.  Though I suspect the DTS-HD MA track, with more than double the bitrate, should be technically stronger, I found it impossible to discern a difference between the two.  Like the majority of Kurosawa’s work, the sound design here is quite subtle and restrained, with occasional punctuation from louder effects and minimalist soundtrack cues.  Dialogue is crisp and intelligible throughout, with no undue technical flaws – not that I was expecting any from this very recent production.  As with the visuals, I’d say the audio here is precisely as it should be.  A lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Japanese option is also included for the sake of completeness.  The optional English subtitles that accompany the feature are clear and legible, appear quite well translated, and don’t suffer the sparsity evident on some translations.  As an uncultured American I did muse at some of the verbage – “smartarse” jumps to mind.  Again, I’ve no complaints.

Supplements appear to duplicate those that appear on the Japanese DVD edition, and with the exception of the UK trailer for the feature (3 minutes, HD) are all presented in 480p SD.  You get a Making Of documentary (61 minutes) that covers literally every aspect of the production and features plenty of behind-the-scenes footage, a Q & A Session (12 minutes) and other footage (15 minutes) from the September 2008 premiere in Tokyo, as well as a discussion of the benefits of seeing the film on DVD from the cast and director (9 minutes).  I enjoy the respectful and appreciative tone of these pieces more than those of their American counterparts, which are typically no more than studio fluff.  The humility of all those involved is not lost on this reviewer, and I look forward to seeing more from all of them.  Rounding things out is a thick 28 page booklet that features a brief director’s statement from Kiyoshi Kurosawa and a excellent original essay by B. Kite.

I really can’t recommend Tokyo Sonata enough, whether you’re a fan of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s brand of cinema or not.  This is certainly a standout piece in his impressive oeuvre, and well deserving of the attention it has received.  This was my first import Blu-ray, as well as my first experience the Masters of Cinema series, and I was duly impressed on both counts.  MoC have put together a stellar high definition release, from the basics of the transfer right on up, and one that no self-respecting cinema buff should be without.  You’ll not find a higher recommendation from me than here – this is must-have stuff.

1 Case in point: At the time of this writing a certain eBay seller has DVDs of the Masters of Cinema series edition of The Burmese Harp listed at a whopping 381 pounds sterling – more than $600!  It’s an exceptional release of an exceptional film, to be sure, but that level of faux-crisis price fixing is shear insanity.
2 Emphasis mine.
in conclusion
Film: Excellent  Video: Excellent  Audio: Excellent   Supplements: Excellent
Harrumphs: None.
Packaging: Standard Blu-ray case, 28-page booklet.
Final Words: Everyone has there favorite director, but for me there’s nothing quite like the K. Kurosawa touch.  Tokyo Sonata is brilliant filmmaking through and through, and easily the director’s most accessible film to date.  There’s nothing at all wrong with the Masters of Cinema series Blu-ray edition of this title, except perhaps that you don’t own it.  A must have! 

Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror

August 20th, 2011 | article by | 5 Comments »
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a.k.a. Le Notti del Terrore / The Nights of Terror / Zombie III / Burial Ground
Year: 1981   Company: Esteban Cinematografica   Runtime: 84′
Director: Andrea Bianci   Writers: Piero Regnoli   Cinematography: Gianfranco Maioletti
Music: Elsio Mancuso, Berto Pisano   Cast: Karin Well, Gianluigi Chrizzi, Simone Mattioli, Antonella Antinori,
Roberto Caporeli, Peter Bark, Claudio Zucchet, Anna Valente, Raimondo Barbieri, Mariangela Girodano
Disc company: Media Blasters / Shriek Show   Video: 1080p 1.66:1    Audio: DTS-HD MA 2.0 English
Subtitles: None   Disc: BD50 (Region A)   Release Date: 08/23/2011
Order this disc now from Amazon.com

An assortment of upper class nincompoops head to a majestic, isolated villa for a bit of rest and recreation, unaware that the resident mad archaeologist has uncovered the terrible secret of awakening the ancient Etruscan dead.  Not long after the guests arrive the dead begin to rise, stalking our witless heroes with slow, sloooow determination and devouring them one by one.

Director Andrea Bianchi  heads up this dreadful zombie shocker from 1981, a derivative cross between Fulci’s Zombi 2 and Ossorio’s The Blind Dead series (substitute dead Etruscans for dead Templars) with a perverse dollop of sexploitation thrown in for good measure.  Bianchi appears to have been working with even less resources than normal for this feature, but he’s in rare sleazy form all the same.  Mostly known for erotic thrillers (Malabimba, Strip Nude for your Killer) and outright porn, the director loads Burial Ground to tipping point with crude sex and bottom dollar gore, not to mention a bit of his signature strangeness.

Penned by frequent Bianchi collaborator Piero Regnoli, Burial Ground‘s narrative encompasses about a cocktail napkin worth of dramatic material.  Yuppies descend upon a villa, screw around, and are eaten one-by-one by an unstoppable horde of the undead.  There’s plenty of running back and forth (especially in the latter third of the film) and even the pretense of backstory (a mad archaeologist, a deadly secret, a “profecy” of dubious relation to anything), but not much that could honestly be called plot.  This is exploitation in the purest sense of the word, with a handful of obnoxious but innocent idiots meeting a series of gruesome and undeserved demises strictly so that the producers can turn a buck.  It’s commercial trash in the poorest of possible taste, but whatever it lacks in altruistic motivations is more than made up for by an abundance of weirdness, camp, and cheap bloody thrills.

As for the latter, they’re mostly appropriated from past successes.  Fulci’s Zombi 2 is copied outright, right down to effects man Gino De Rossi’s (City of the Living Dead) designs for the maggot-and-worm ridden Etruscans.  The effect here is achieved with masks that appear to have been made of everything from rubber to clay to papier-mâché, and is pretty dreadful.  In an effort to create a skeletal appearance some performers’ features – noses, eyes, lips – are coated in black paint, an ineffectual method that’s obvious even in the poorest of copies of the film.  The actions of the zombies are likewise recycled for the most part, from hands popping out of the ground to harass a pair of young lovers to an adaptation of Zombi 2‘s infamous splinter sequence, here with shattered glass substituted.

  
  
  

There is still some originality in Burial Ground‘s dusty bones, however, and some of the kill scenes are quite novel.  My personal favorite has a man intruding upon the meditations of a table-full of monks, only to discover (too late of course) that he’s wandered into a monastery of the living dead.  After gorging themselves on our leading man the monks toddle off in a heads-bowed single-file procession – all that’s missing is a Gregorian chant!  Earlier in the film a maid is stalked, ninja style, by an especially clever zombie, who lunges from behind a planter and traps her on an upper-floor shutter with a well placed hand-thrown nail!  The poor maid is then beset by a gaggle of hungry dead, who gruesomely decapitate her with a scythe and take to munching on her disembodied head.

Burial Ground‘s gore isn’t as imaginative or well-produced as that in contemporary Fulci and Argento efforts, but if you’re one who prefers quantity over quality then there is a lot of it here for you to enjoy.  The usual tricks are employed – rubbery prosthetics, blood pumps and sacs full of slaughterhouse garbage.  Bianchi and photographer Gianfranco Maioletti (Cosmos: War of the Planets) ogle over their bottom barrel handiwork in lingering and unfocused close-ups, ensuring that the viewers are treated to heaping eyefuls of sloshing viscera and vivid red stage blood as often as can be afforded.  There is even a bit of style to be had here, with many of the gore scenes accentuated with inserts of Peckinpah-inspired slow motion violence (gunshots, skull crushing, even a zombie lit on fire).

Though undeniably gross, none of it could be called scary – Bianchi doesn’t have the patience (or perhaps the talent) to evoke any fear, suspense, or dread.  There is some notable creep factor, however, all to do with an off-the-wall narrative diversion about a doting mother and the incestuous intentions of her son Michael.  For reasons that likely have more to do with the legality of involving children in such situations than any foresight on the part of the producers, Michael is played not by a child but by middle-aged dwarf Peter Bark.  The results are far more unsettling than any of the more obvious horrors, as a man who’s supposed to be a boy cuddles up to and attempts to molest the beautiful Mariangela Giordano (Malabimba, Satan’s Baby Doll).  The subplot comes full circle in Burial Ground‘s most infamous scene – one that has been described at length elsewhere, but that I’ll not spoil here.

Burial Ground clocks in at a reasonable 85 minutes and gets to the gory bits early and often, with a some nudity and a lot of awful dubbed dialogue (far below the norm for these things, but featuring plenty of familiar Italian splatter voice actors) to amuse audiences in between.  Technically this is pretty wretched stuff, unattractively lit and awkwardly photographed with lots of handheld work, but it certainly has camp appeal and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t love it.  Those looking for a pointless and sleazy diversion could certainly do worse.

  
  
  

There’s actually quite a lot to discuss with regards to this Media Blasters / Shriek Show blu-ray edition of Burial Ground, and despite the obvious issues of transfer quality that discussion isn’t to be all bad.  As such I’ll not bore you with the typical disc introductions.

Firstly, rumors have abounded that past DVD editions of Burial Ground, be they from Japan Shock, AWE or Media Blasters, have all been cut by approximately four seconds – four seconds that have been reputed to contain additional gore.  As reported by Cinezilla and proven by this Youtube video of the missing footage, culled from a long-OOP and uncut Japanese VHS edition, all of the violent material is present and accounted for in the DVD editions.  What is missing from them is roughly half of a shot in which the mustachioed Simone Mattioli turns his head in horror after shuttering a window.  I’m pleased to report that this new Blu-ray edition does not appear to be sourced from the same elements as the DVD editions, and that the additional 4 seconds of Mattioli face-time are present and accounted for.  Yay.

As expected, there is a disparity in running time between the two Media Blasters presentations, but counter to expectations it does not run in the direction one might think.  The DVD edition runs for 1 hour 25 minutes and 8 seconds, while the HD edition runs a brisker 1 hour 23 minutes and 24 seconds – a difference of 1 minute and 44 seconds.  The immediate assumption is that the HD edition is missing footage.  Well it is, but there appears to be more to it than that.  At second glance the new Blu-ray edition of Burial Ground appears to be transferred from a different cut of the film than the DVD.  Let’s have a look at some of the missing footage first:

At 00:25:50 in the Blu-ray edition the scene cuts from the first image below to the next during the scene in which a zombie emerges from a planter:

 

What’s missing between these two points are roughly 10 seconds of footage, here sourced from the Media Blasters DVD – a connecting shot of the planter moving and two shots of the two actors getting hot with one another, as well as the first portion of the second shot listed above:

 
 

But here’s the weird bit:  The Blu-ray edition also features 27 seconds of footage at the beginning of this scene that is not present on the DVD.

In this case the DVD cuts between these two shots:

 

Whereas the Blu-ray adds this between them, an additional 27 second shot in which the two lovers arrive at the fountain and start kissing:

 

So, make of this what you will.  To my eyes this doesn’t so much look like a cut film, as a differently cut film.  The audio for the two sequences is cut from the same dub track, with each cut featuring the same dialogue and sound effects playing over the very different footage.  Why?  I don’t know.

Even earlier in the film, during the exploding chandelier sequence, the Blu-ray also adds the following two brief shots in addition to those already present on the DVD:

 

Though similar shots as above do appear in the DVD, the two above are unique to the Blu-ray.  Harder to take for those gorehounds among you may be the exclusion of the following two lightning-quick cuts from the Blu-ray edition of the film:

 

The two cuts, missing from the scene in which Peter Bark’s stepfather fires upon and is devoured by zombies, amount to approximately 1 second of running time, but by the strictest of measures it certainly suggests that gore that is present on the DVD is not present on the Blu-ray.  (Note: I have since run through each and every gore scene shot for shot, comparing the Blu-ray and DVD, and have found no other missing footage.  Whatever makes up the rest of the 1 minute and 44 second difference here, it’s not gore.)  After discovering these anomalies I am if anything more confused as two what’s going on with the source here than I was after I noted the disparity in running times.

It’ll take a shot for shot comparison between the two editions to tell just what all the differences are between them, and I’ve got no time for that at the moment.  The above at least proves that the Blu-ray edition of Burial Ground features a different cut, and is missing some footage even though it adds other, so keep that in mind if you’re thinking about purchasing.

Addendum 08/30/2011: After some discussion with kentaifilms, we seem to have discovered the root cause of the 1:44 of missing footage on this Blu-ray.  I’ve given him the glory of writing an article on the matter, as I’m sick of talking about this one, but the problem amounts to this:  At seemingly every opportunity, either MB or the post house that transferred the film originally have removed anywhere from a single to a handful of frames from just before or just after the physical cuts that hold the footage of this film together.  With a minute and 44 seconds missing that means that roughly 2500 previously available frames of footage are now gone, for reasons I’ll not even guess at (Kentai suggests a pitiful attempt to cover bad splices, and that makes as much sense as anything I can come up with).  Bottom line: This release is CUT, and in as bizarre a fashion as I’ve ever seen.  Keep that in mind if you’re debating purchasing.

And now, what everyone has been waiting for – how does the image compare to that of the older Media Blasters DVD edition?  Note that DVD snapshots appear before their Blu-ray counterparts, and have been upscaled to 1920×1080 for ease of comparison.

Presumably the work of the much-maligned LVR Post in Rome (there is no on-disc credit given for the transfer this go around) (according to LVR they are NOT responsible for this transfer) the new 1080p transfer of Burial Ground is presented at an aspect ratio of 1.66:1, opening the image considerably at the top and slightly to the right while losing slight amounts of information at the left and bottom.  Overall the framing appears quite comfortable, and allows more headroom than the 1.85:1 DVD image.  Colors appear relatively consistent across the two releases for the most part, with the HD transfer boosting saturation and losing the overly green tinge of the DVD in some sequences.  Contrast is notably boosted in comparison to the DVD, to excess in many cases, and shadow detail is practically non-existent in the inky blacks.  Subjectively I find the color palette and contrast of the HD transfer preferable to that of the DVD, but neither aspect is in any way indicative of what the format is capable of.

Detail tightens up noticeably, but definitely not to the extent that it should.  Burial Ground has issues with focus throughout, limiting the degree of detail available at the source level, but there’s no doubt in my mind that the image could have been better resolved than it is here.  There are hints of finer detail lurking beneath the surface in comparison sets four and five, but the clarity of the image is constantly compromised by an ever present and at times downright tumultuous layer of ugly digital noise.  Most HD transfers of Italian exploitation efforts, from City of the Living Dead to Zombi Holocaust, have all presented with noise issues to one degree or other, but this is by far the worst I’ve seen from them.  As evidenced by the sixth and seventh set of comparison captures, if the noise were much thicker there’d be serious trouble with discerning that there was any image beneath it at all!  It’s impossible to identify any natural film texture here, though it’s surely lurking in the image somewhere, and that’s a damned shame.  In purely technical terms the AVC encode is strong, averaging in at a sky-high 37.5 Mbps, but it’s a pity all that that bitrate potential had to be wasted on this.  The only artifacts appear embedded in the HD master itself, and are limited to frame-specific blips in which the noise becomes smeary and fails to resolve.

The opening and closing credits make for an interesting aside.  Sourced form different film elements and evidently telecined separately from the rest of the film, they lose the overbearing noisiness showcased elsewhere in the transfer and possess a more naturally film-like quality.  Sure the image is soft and the colors less than ideal, but I’d argue that this footage still looks better than the rest of the transfer.  Pity.

Much more so than the problematic video, the audio for Burial Ground receives a substantial boost courtesy of a DTS-HD MA 2.0 English track at around 1.5 Mbps.  The older DVD sounds quite muffled and flat throughout, but the track cleans up very nicely here.  The meandering synth score that permeates so much of the film is granted newfound depth, and made much more of an impression on me in this viewing than on any prior.  Dialogue sounds typical of the post-dub recording of the time, but is much clearer and more dynamic than before.  I didn’t note much in the way of background noise, and the track sounds remarkably clean for a bottom dollar mix of its vintage.  I must admit to being pleasantly surprised in this regard, and the heightened audio fidelity helped take at least a bit of the edge off the disappointing visuals.

Supplements for the most part duplicate those previously presented on the Media Blasters DVD, and include interviews with producer Gabriele Crisanti and actress Mariangela Giordano (SD, 20 minutes), an original trailer in SD and an gallery of advertising and video art (SD, 6 minutes).  The most exciting thing about the disc is a new supplement, a 9-minute collection of outtakes from the film in 1080p HD.  Presented at an aspect ratio of 1.66:1 with only appropriated soundtrack cues as accompaniment (the unused footage was never post-dubbed), the visual quality of the outtakes is consistent with that of the film – saturated, noisy, and lacking in fine detail.  In this case I won’t complain.  The additional minutes comprise a handful of dialogue bits excised from the beginning of the film, a bit of unused sex footage featuring Karin Well (!), more creepy Peter Bark, several shots of zombies wandering about and a snippet of unused gore.

 
 

I’m not of the opinion that Burial Ground‘s high definition debut is a total disaster, but after seeing what Media Blasters / Shriek Show are really capable of courtesy of Devil Dog – The Hound of Hell it’s a shame this didn’t turn out better.  The upgrade in video quality is too problematic to be substantial, but the improvements to the audio presentation and the inclusion of previously unseen outtake material make the package much more attractive than it would otherwise have ben.  Plenty of retailers are selling this one on the cheap, and those keen on the film may want to give it a shot.

in conclusion
Film: Awful trashy fun    Video: Fair +    Audio: Very Good +   Supplements: Good +
Harrumphs: No subtitles,  and the video transfer is positively riddled with noise
Packaging: Standard Blu-ray case.
 Recommendation: Cheap and unoriginal to its rotten little core, but fun all the same for those in the mood for a garrishly violent slice of Euro-cult mayhem. The visuals only receive a minor (and problematic) boost here, and the film appears to be some kind of alternate cut as well.  But the excellent audio and inclusion of interesting outtake material may well make this Blu-ray worth the price of upgrading.

Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell

August 18th, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
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Year: 1978  Company: Zeitman-Landers-Roberts Productions / CBS   Runtime: 95′
Director: Curtis Harrington   Writers: Steven Karpf, Elinor Karpf   Cinematography: Gerald P. Finnerman
Music: Artie Kane  Cast: Richard Crenna, Yvette Mimeux, Kim Richards, Ike Eisenmann, Victor Jory,
Lou Frizzeli, Ken Kercheval, R. G. Armstrong, Martine Beswick, Bob Navarro, Lois Ursone, Jerry Fogel
Disc company: Media Blasters / Shriek Show   Video: 1080p 1.33:1    Audio: DTS-HD MA 2.0 English,
DTS-HD MA 2.0 Italian   Subtitles: None   Disc: BD50 (Region A)   Release Date: 06/28/2011
Order this disc now from Amazon.com

Produced for CBS television by Zeitman-Landers-Roberts Productions in 1978, Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell may well be one of the silliest of the multitude of demon-fueled horrors to follow in the wake of Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist and The Omen.  For my money it’s also one of the more amusing.  For the sake of full disclosure the devil of the title is not in fact the devil, but a barghest – a monstrous black dog from English folklore that here possesses a cute German Shepherd named Lucky.  I’d argue that it’s a distinction without a difference, however, as Devil Dog follows plenty of the familiar tropes of its successful theatrical predecessors.

The story, credited to Steven and Elinor Karpf (Gargoyles), is pretty ridiculous even by the rather low standards set by past devil-on-the-loose pictures.  Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell begins with some shady cultists (led by the lovely Martine Beswick, Prehistoric Women) raising a hell-beast from beyond to breed with a prize-worthy German Shepherd as part of an unbelievable scheme to spread their cult-y ways to middle America one demonic puppy at a time.  I suppose if this film teaches us anything it’s that you shouldn’t buy puppies from out the back of some creepy bastard’s (R. G. Armstrong!) rolling produce stand, but that’s precisely what little Bonnie and Charlie (Kim Richards and Ike Eisenmann, of Escape to and Return from Witch Mountain fame) do after they find that their old dog has been unceremoniously run over.

Parents Mike and Betty Barry (Richard Crenna and a still-gorgeous Yvette Mimeux) are happy to see the new puppy arrive, but stereotypical Latina-maid-with-supernatural-intuition Maria (Tina Menard, who made an impressive career out minor ethnic roles) knows that there’s more to the critter than meets the eye.  Unfortunately Maria is not long for this world, and before she can get anyone to take her concerns seriously she finds herself spontaneously combusting – a victim of the demon-puppy’s nefarious powers.  Believing the death to be just a horrible accident Mike and the family move on, but as the puppy grows ever stranger things begin to happen.  Neighbors die, the kids take a turn for the weird, and Betty becomes promiscuous, while Mike struggles to deal with the consequences.  Before long he realizes that it’s his lovable dog Lucky who’s to blame, leaving him no recourse but to travel to Ecuador (?!) in search of a solution to his other-worldly problem.

  
  
  

Director Curtis Harrington (Queen of Blood, Night Tide) was none too fond of Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell, a film he felt was too poorly written and under-financed to be a successful horror picture.  He approached the material with cool professionalism all the same, generating some genuine spookiness and suspense along the way.  Through montage alone he renders the possessed Lucky’s movement through a living room uncharacteristically unnerving, while a sequence in which Mike is willed by the dog to stick his hand into a whirring lawnmower blade maintains suspense in spite of its guaranteed-bloodless made-for-TV pedigree.

Otherwise, this small-screen spook fest is held together by the talent of its cast alone.  Richard Crenna is solid as an everyman out of his element, keeping his cool even as the Karpf’s teleplay takes a nose-dive into the absurd.   Crenna had some experience in battling goofy demonic forces by this point, of course, having rid a rural mansion of a pudgy and be-suited devil from a bright and foggy alternate dimension in The Evil earlier the same year.  Yvette Mimeux (Dark of the Sun, The Time Machine) gives another charming and sympathetic performance, even as the writing fails her.  So convincing is her loving housewife that it’s difficult to believe her turn for the wicked later in the film.  The supporting cast is as strong as the rest, from cultists Martine Beswick and R. G. Armstrong (Race With the Devil) to doomed neighbor Lou Frizzell (The Other) and Ecuadorian shaman Victor Jory (Cat-Women of the Moon).

It’s a pity, then, that a little more money wasn’t thrown Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell‘s way, as the crux of the story – the spectacular appearance of the eponymous creature in all its horrifying glory – is a failure of hilarious proportions.  Rather than pay for traditional composite effects work, the producers instead turned to the video technology of 1978 for a cheaper solution.  The results must be seen to believed, with Lucky transforming into a floating fluffy and glowing-eyed triceratops-looking thing that is, to be kind, less frightening than was perhaps intended.  At times it appears as though an especially awful ’80s metal video is invading a perfectly normal film.  As such the final confrontation between Crenna and the beast at a chemical works is rightly one of the most memorable moments of the film, even if it’s remembered for all the wrong reasons.

It’s easy to see why director Curtis Harrington never looked kindly upon his involvement in this production, but it’s really not so bad as all that.  The ridiculousness of the monster reveal lends the production plenty of schlock appeal, and the dramatics are all the more enjoyable for their silliness.  All in all this is a fun little diversion that’s more family friendly than the title would ever suggest, and those keen on creature features should find plenty to love.

  
  
  

I have no great confidence in video distributor Media Blasters after their handling of Zombi Holocaust, which may well be the worst-produced disc I’ve seen all year even without getting into the issues of the transfer, but I was still interested in seeing how well they might handle a domestic title for which dubious transfer practices abroad would not be an issue.  To that end I found their Blu-ray issue of Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell to be unexpectedly strong, leaving me to wonder why the rest of their high definition titles haven’t been handled in kind.

Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell looks surprisingly good here, transferred in 1080p at its native 1.33:1 aspect ratio.  The low-budget television production only rarely looks so, with the 35mm photography scaling nicely to HD.  Colors can appear a bit muted at times, but other than that there’s precious little to complain about.  Detail is at healthy levels throughout, with some close-ups looking quite exceptional, and contrast is consistently strong.  Film grain is always in evidence but isn’t overpowering, and the AVC encode at an average bitrate of 29.2 Mbps dutifully supports it.  Damage is visible in the form of speckling and debris, much of which appears to have been printed right into the film, but isn’t as heavy as I expected for a film of this budget and vintage.  The brief video-mastered effects scenes are a particularly ugly exception to the rest, with the 35mm source footage having been mastered on video, overlayed with the desired effects, and fianlly printed back to 35mm.  These scenes (there are two) present with more damage than the rest of the film, both the soft and fuzzy blips captured during the first film-to-video conversion and the tack-sharp dust and specks that emerged when the resulting video footage was transferred back to 35mm stock.  The interlacing artifacts and degraded detail and color in these sequences are built right into the source and, as awful as it may seem, look precisely as they should.

Compare and contrast: Facial detail of the excellent (1) and adorable (2) kind versus the absolute worst in vintage 1978 video mastering technology (3). That ungainly black crescent to the right in the final shot is in fact print damage captured in the video mastering process, while to the left of it is a razor-sharp speck produced when the footage was re-printed to film.  Weird stuff, but neat!

The primary audio option is an honest DTS-HD MA 2.0 English track that easily handles the original frills-free recording.  Dialogue and effects are clear, and aside from some hiss inherent to the original mix there’s nothing to complain about here.  I’d say it sounded better than I expected, and is likely as good as its going to get.  Accompanying the English track is a secondary DTS-HD MA 2.0 Italian dub which, aside from the hilarity that can be had from switching between the original English and the looped Italian, seems rather pointless.  There are no subtitles.

Supplements are duplicated from the earlier 2-disc DVD, but have been reformatted (rd: windowboxed) to fit a 16:9 frame.  The biggest draw is a so-called featurette on the making of the film, To the Devil a Dog (SD), that runs a whopping 73 minutes, and features input from producer Jerry Zeitman and stars Kim Richards and Ike Eisenmann.  Next up is a 15 minute audio interview with the late Curtis Harrington, to whom this disc is dedicated.  Next is a brief photo gallery of supporting player Martine Beswick, followed by an essay / interview with the actress that plays as a text scroll.  A promotional trailer for the feature and a handful of previews for other Media Blasters properties rounds out the on-disc material.

Well color me surprised.  With the inevitable disappointment of Media Blasters’ Burial Ground blu-ray looming (my copy arrives tomorrow) I was expecting nothing good from this, a disc I picked up simply because it was too cheap not to review it.  Needless to say Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell surpassed my non-existent expectations with room to spare, all the more so because MB actually managed to meet their street date for the title.  Soak in the success while it lasts – if only all of their releases were this good.

in conclusion
Film: Fun!  Video: Excellent –  Audio: Very Good   Supplements: Very Good
Harrumphs: No subtitles
Packaging: Standard Blu-ray case.
Final Words: Sure, it’s silly, but sincere performances coupled with a ridiculous script and some of the worst video-mastered effects in US television history make it more than worth your while.  I dig it!

Zombie Rival – The Super Ninja Master

August 15th, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
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a.k.a. Zombie vs. Ninja / Zombie Rivals / Zombie Rival / Zombie Rival – The Super Master
Year: 1988   Company: IFD Films and Arts Limited   Runtime: 88′
Director: Godfrey Ho   Writers: AAV Creative Center, Godfrey Ho    Cinematography: Raymond Chang
Music: Stephen Tsang   Cast: Pierre Kirby, Dewey Bosworth, Thomas Hartham, Patrick Frzebar, Elton Chong,
Mike Wong-Lung, Jin Nu-Ri, Guk Ching-Woon, Kim Wuk, Cheung Chit, Kim Wong-Cheol, Park Wan-Su
Order the OOP VHS edition from Amazon.com

First things first – I’ve absolutely no idea what this little nugget of white-ninja mayhem is supposed to be called, and a quick Google search reveals that it has no fewer than five titles in English alone!  Even the IFD Films and Arts-produced English trailer appears confused, showing one title while the narrator reads another.  It seems pertinent to note that none of the five titles I found are terribly accurate, from the relatively straight-forward Zombie vs. Ninja on up.  As such I’ll be referring to the film by my favorite of the five, which also happens to be the most convoluted and nonsensical: Zombie Rival – The Super Ninja Master.

Never let it be said that Joseph Lai and Godfrey Ho couldn’t come up with a good title (or five) when pressed for them.  Good films, however, seem to have been another matter entirely…

Zombie Rival – The Super Ninja Master follows squarely in the footsteps of other Lai and Ho spectacles, and presents viewers with a more or less passable import feature that’s been cut to match a new story (in this case one written by the dubbing company!) and framed with all-new Ho-directed material starring an all-white cast.  In this case the results are particularly dubious but no less enjoyable for the trouble, with ‘stars’ Pierre Kirby and Dewey Bosworth (of Thunder of Gigantic Serpent fame) looking well out of place in their shiny off-the-shelf fighting regalia and matching ninja head bands.  Remember kids, real ninjas wear head gear that says ninja.

"I think his name is Duncan... something..."

At its heart Zombie Rival – The Super Ninja Master is actually a fanciful South Korean martial arts comedy from 1983, The Undertaker From Sohwa Province, a film that unfortunately appears unavailable in its original condition (VHS and DVD releases under the title Gravedigger are reportedly sourced from the ZRTSNM edit, and lose the hilarious white-guys but retain the awful English dialogue track that refers to them).  The story for Undertaker follows a predictable arc, with an impetuous youngster witnessing the deaths of his parents at the hands of kung-fu baddies, then hooking up with a secret martial arts master so that he might learn the tricks of the trade and seek glorious kung-fu vengeance.

Though the story of The Undertaker From Sohwa Province will sound broadly familiar, the difference is really in the details.  The requisite kung-fu master is the eponymous undertaker, a scabby buck-toothed parody who raises the dead just for kicks and relishes nothing more than tormenting his young underling Ethan (that’s IFD Film and Arts’ name for him, not mine – he’s played affably by South Korean genre star Elton Chong).  Through the undertaker’s bizarre tactics Ethan somehow learns a fighting style that looks like the martial arts equivalent of dancing the robot.  If that’s what digging holes and carrying around coffins full of rocks all day can net you, then count me in!  It is in this source film that the only supernatural elements of Zombie Rival – The Super Ninja Master are found, as the undertaker’s underling does practice combat with a variety of living corpses.  Peripheral characters also display unnatural abilities, as in the case of a female baddie who seems capable of disappearing at will.

There’s a lot of legitimate bemusement to be had with Undertaker‘s light-hearted material, which features Ethan sledding through a wintry forest on a coffin among other things.  The same cannot be said of the frequently profane post-dubbing applied by Lai associate ADDA Audio and Visual limited (who helped Joseph Lai bring knock-off pan-Asian animations like Raiders of Galaxy to English audiences), which is heaps of fun for all the wrong reasons.  I can’t imagine that there were more than a handful of personnel working the voice side of Zombie Rival – The Super Ninja Master, but they get away with a range of improbable characterizations, from the shrill, squeaky undertaker to the arch and dramatic father of his pupil.  Adding to the hilarity are the highly inappropriate English names forced upon the characters – in addition to Ethan there are Bobby, Bert, Ira, Mason, Duncan and so on.

  
  
  

The competent (if incompetently presented) Undertaker is interrupted early and often by the new white-centric dramatics of Godfrey Ho.  The writing for these sequences fairs about as well as for the other dubbed material, often beginning mid-conversation (“…so that’s the plan”) and continuing on into dull and ambiguous pontificating about stolen gold and positions of power.  All of it would be quite drab and forgettable were it not being performed with such earnest by middle-aged white men running around the woods in cheap Halloween costumes.  Ho attempts, if only lazily, to intersect his new story with that of the appropriated footage, but the results are awful at best, with Pierre Kirby and Dewey Bosworth speaking to characters obviously in other locations entirely.

When it comes to action Ho is a bit better equipped, even if the results are less than stellar.  Ho coaxes Kirby, Bosworth, and a larger cast of unrecognizable Caucasians into a slew of lightning-paced action sequences that have katanas clashing and men leaping about with maddening frequency.  It reminded fondly of the psychotic action direction seen in the Turkish exploitation of old, trampolines and all, and I wasn’t bothered in the least when Kirby was replaced mid-shot by a foot-shorter stunt double in an awful floppy wig.

Truth be told, I was at a complete loss for what to say about Zombie Rival – The Super Ninja Master until just this point, and now I think I’ve said more than enough.  There’s no arguing that it’s an immensely stupid, terrible film, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoyed every minute of it.  Between this and the indescribable Robo Vampire I feel I’m quickly becoming one of the Ho faithful, and open to whatever dreadful implications that might imply.  Your mileage may vary, but if you only see one “bad white actors pretending to be ninjas” film this year it may as well be this one.

This review needed more Pierre Kirby. I make no apologies.

in conclusion
Film: Yeah, about that…
Final Thoughts: This is another martial arts pastiche of remarkable stupidity, but with Godfrey Ho involved we should expect nothing less.  I loved it, but may not be of sound mind.

War God

August 10th, 2011 | article by | 3 Comments »
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Original Title: Zhan Shen   a.k.a. The Big Calamity (Da Zai Nan)
Year: 1976   Company: Xinghua Pictures / Prince Pictures   Country: Taiwan   Runtime: 85′
Director: Chan Hung-Man   Writer: Lam Ching-Gaai   Cinematography: Lai Man-Sing, Lam Chi-Wing, Wong Shui-Cheung    Music: Wong Mau-Saan   Cast: Gu Ming-Lun, Tse Ling-Ling, Cindy Tang Hsin, Chan Yau-San   Choreography: Ho Ming-Hiu    Special Effects: Koichi Takano   Producer: Fu Ching-Wa

Poster for War God under its alternative Chinese title The Big Calamity

Pre-review note: English sources on the cast and crew of this film are practically non-existent, and the information above was gleaned from a combination of a meager HKMDB listing and a Chinese Wikipedia entry.  Accuracy is not guaranteed.

War God, alternatively known online under the unofficial titles Calamity and Guan Yu vs. the Aliens, was once among the rarest of the rare in Taiwanese fantasy, stuff the likes of which we Westerners could only ever dream of seeing in the flesh.  Like Poon Lui’s Devil Fighter and Yu Hon-Cheung’s Monster From the Sea, War God was until recently thought of as un-seeable, with only a handful of advertising images and contemporary newspaper articles arguing for its existence at all.

One can imagine my surprise, then, when a hard-subtitled rental VHS copy of War God found its way into torrent circulation, and the film once thought unobtainable practically fell into my lap!  The future is a wonderful place, my dear readers, a wonderful place indeed.

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The Women in Cages Collection

August 5th, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
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Disc company: Shout! Factory   Video: 1080p / 1.78:1    Audio: DTS-HD MA 2.0 English
Subtitles: None   Disc: BD25 / BD50   Release Date: 08/23/2011   Reviewed from a screener provided by Shout! Factory LLC (Thanks Mitzye!)  Available for preorder through Amazon.com 

This is to be a technical review only.  If you wish to hear what I have to say about the three films in this collection then please read my earlier coverage of the DVD edition.

Shout! Factory released the Women in Cages Collection to DVD just over a month ago. For my money it was a very strong release, with plenty of cult appeal and considerable supplemental heft.  Now that the Blu-ray edition has arrived there are two questions demanding to be answered: How does it compare to the earlier DVD, and is the difference between the two substantial enough to warrant the considerably higher price tag?

To answer the first question, the Women in Cages Blu-ray collection does offer a substantial upgrade in audio-visual quality in comparison to the earlier DVD, and perhaps even more of an upgrade than this reviewer was expecting of it.  That’s not to say that the release is without its problems, unfortunately, but at least they’re not of the same damnable stuff that have compromised some of the other discs recently reviewed here.

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Mystery Science Theater 3000 XXI: MST3K vs. Gamera

July 26th, 2011 | article by | 1 Comment »
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includes: ep 302 Gamera, ep 304 Gamera vs. Barugon, ep 308 Gamera vs. Gaos,
ep 312 Gamera vs. Guiron, and ep 316 Gamera vs. Zigra   Year: 1991  Company: Best Brains   Runtime: 97′
Writers: Michael J. Nelson, Trace Beaulieu, Frank Conniff, Joel Hodgson, Kevin Murphy, Paul Chaplin,
Bridget Jones, Jim Mallon, Colleen Henjum, Lisa Sheretz, Jef Maynard   Cast: Joel Hodgson,
Trace Beaulieu, Kevin Murphy, Frank Conniff, Jim Mallon, Michael J. Nelson, Bridget Jones, Jef Maynard
Disc company: Shout! Factory   Video: 480i 4:3    Audio: Dolby Digital 2.0 English
Subtitles: None   Disc: DVD9 (3) DVD5 (2)   Release Date: 08/02/2011   Product link: Amazon.com
Reviewed from a screener provided by Shout! Factory LLC. Thanks guys!

Across ten years and nearly two hundred episodes, it is hard for me to imagine any partnership between man and material more monumental than that between the crew of the Satellite of Love and the unstoppable syndication megalith Sandy Frank.  The masterminds of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 took aim at his package of English-dubbed import programs early and often, much to Frank’s chagrin, first discovering his handiwork in the available properties of Twin Cities area UHF station KTMA and subsequently re-discovering it during their years on Comedy Central.   From Humanoid Woman to Mighty Jack to Fugitive Alien I and II, there were few features with Frank’s name on them that weren’t square in the SOL’s sights at one time or another, and with good reason.

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Women in Cages Collection (The Big Doll House / The Big Bird Cage / Women in Cages)

July 25th, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
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Disc company: Shout! Factory   Video: 480p / 1.78:1    Audio: Dolby Digital 2.0 English
Subtitles: None   Disc: 2x DVD9   Release Date: 06/28/2011   Reviewed from a screener provided by Shout! Factory LLC (Thanks Mitzye!)  DVD available now at Amazon.com, Blu-ray available for pre-order.

Shout! Factory are at it again, with the latest in their continuing line of Roger Corman’s Cult Classics turning up the heat just in time for summer to hit its stride.  The Women in Cages Collection brings together a course trio of Philippines-produced ‘women in prison’ exploitationers from the early years of Corman’s New World Pictures, all of which center around blaxploitation megastar Pam Grier (Foxy Brown) and her considerable assets, professional and otherwise.  The Women in Cages collection offers just about everything fans of Corman productions could ever ask for – plenty of exposed flesh and wanton depravity balanced by a hefty dose of blistering woman-scorned revenge.

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Trailers From Hell Volume 2

July 18th, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
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Disc company: Shout! Factory   Video: 480p / 4:3    Audio: Dolby Digital 2.0 English
Subtitles: None   Disc: DVD9   Release Date: 07/05/2011   Reviewed from a screener provided by Shout! Factory LLC (Thanks Mitzye!)  Available for purchase at Amazon.com

One of the more exciting developments in the cult film community over the past few years has been the advent of Trailers From Hell, a site that brings together obscure (and occasionally not so obscure) films and the Hollywood personalities who love them for rock-em sock-em two to four minute trailer commentaries that are accessible, free of charge, to the public.  Since its founding in October of 2007 Trailers From Hell has dabbled only infrequently in commercial territory, once with a Best from… compilation DVD last year and now (through distributor Shout! Factory) with Trailers From Hell Volume 2.  While Best from… offered just what it sounds like, Volume 2 boasts 20 newly-produced commentaries and a hell of a bonus – a new widescreen transfer of Roger Corman’s grim comedy opus The Little Shop of Horrors.

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Things

July 12th, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
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Year: 1989   Company: Left Field Productions   Runtime: 84′
Director: Andrew Jordan, Barry J. Gillis   Writers: Andrew Jones, Barry J. Gillis   Cinematography: Dan Riggs
Music: Stryk-9, Familiar Strangers, Jack Procher, Barry J. Gillis   Cast: Barry J. Gillis, Amber Lynn, Bruce Roach,
Doug Bunston, Jan W. Pachul, Patricia Sadler, Gordon Lucas, Bruce Hamilton, Daryn Gillis, Jessica Stewarte
Disc company: Intervision Pictures Corp.   Video: 480i / 4:3    Audio: Dolby Digital 2.0 English
Subtitles: None   Disc: DVD9   Release Date: 07/12/2011   Reviewed from a screener provided by Intervision Pictures Corp.  Available for purchase at Amazon.com

Motivated by the uptick in straight-to-video productions originating from the United States and itching to honor their favorite horror directors with a gruesome tale of their own, a handful of Canadians with no discernible talent for production, writing, special effects, direction or performance scrounged together a budget and some Super 8mm shooting equipment and went to work.  The end result, released directly to rental VHS in 1989, was Things, 84 minutes of graphic violence and unbridled stupidity that feels more like an acid trip interrupting a drunken stupor than a film.  To say that Things is dreadful is to understate its case to a degree that borders on the criminal, and while it may not be the worst film yet produced on this Earth it certainly earns points for trying.

So.  What is Things about?  I honestly haven’t the faintest idea.  Though purported to have been written (the stilted line readings would seem to bear this out) there is absolutely no story to speak of here.  Things is, instead, a collection of continuity-defying sequences that amount to precisely nothing in the end.  For instance, the film’s only name attraction, porn star Amber Lynn in one of her few non-sex roles, is limited to a handful of abysmal newsroom scenes (photographed in 16mm on a tiny set, with Amber reading all of her lines in the most obvious manner possible) that have little, if any, connection to the rest of the material.  In this regard the title seems most appropriate – this isn’t a film about anything, it’s a film about Things.

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Antichrist

July 3rd, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
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Year: 2009  Company: Zentropa Entertainment   Runtime: 109′
Director: Lars von Trier   Writer: Lars von Trier   Cinematography: Anthony Dod Mantle
Music: Kristian Eidnes Andersen  Cast: Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg
Disc company: The Criterion Collection   Video: 1080p 2.35:1    Audio: DTS-HD MA 5.1 English
Subtitles: English   Disc: BD50 (Region A)   Release Date: 11/09/2010   Product link: Amazon.com

Note: This Blu-ray review is an update of an article I originally published in 2009, and in which I discuss the film at greater length and in more detail than is the norm. As such I feel it pertinent to warn that this article may contain SPOILERS.  If you’re inclined to be bothered by such things I recommend seeing the film before proceeding further.

An unnamed couple (Dafoe and Gainsbourg) lose their child in a horrific accident (falling from their apartment window as He and She make love) and She, stricken with crippling grief, is hospitalized.  He, a therapist, disagrees with her doctor’s diagnosis of her grief as atypical and, convinced he knows his wife better than anyone, has her released into his care.

She is forced to flush her medication and confront her grief head-on, culminating in He taking her on a therapeutic trip to Eden – a cabin in the woods in which She and her son had spent the previous summer . . .

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Zombi Holocaust

July 1st, 2011 | article by | 14 Comments »
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a.k.a.: Zombie Holocaust, Dr. Butcher M.D.
Year: 1980  Company: Flora Film, Fulvia Film, Gico Cinematografica   Runtime: 84′
Director: Marino Girolami   Writers: Fabrizio De Angelis, Romano Scandariato, Marino Girolami
Cinematography: Fausto Zuccoli   Music: Nico Fidenco  Cast: Ian McCulloch, Alexandra Delli Colli,
Sherry Buchanan, Peter O’Neal, Donald O’Brien, Dakar, Walter Patriarca, Linda Furnis, Roberto Resta
Disc company: Media Blasters / Shriek Show   Video: 1080p 1.78:1    Audio: DTS-HD MA 2.0 English
Subtitles: None   Disc: BD50 (Region A)   Release Date: 06/28/2011   Product link: Amazon.com

Let me put this as simply and directly as I know how – Zombi Holocaust is a stupid, stupid film.  This is not opinion, but incontrovertible truth.  It may also be the quintessential example of the cannibalistic tendencies of the Italian genre film movement of the ’70s and ’80s, in which past successes were imitated and emulated as early and as often as possible.  Zombi Holocaust is one of the more shamelessly commercial of the lot, a transparent re-working of Fulci’s 1979 opus Zombi 2 and Deodato’s grotesque masterpiece Cannibal Holocaust, which saw release less than two months before this film in 1980.

Though its chief inspirations are two of the undisputed classics of Euro-shock cinema, it should come as no surprise that Zombi Holocaust is rarely anything more than cheap and silly.  The story, credited to director Marino Girolami (father of Italian cult cinema icon Enzo G. Castellari), producer Fabrizio De Angelis and assistant director Romano Scandariato, concerns a New York City Department of Public Health investigation (led by Brit Ian McCulloch, star of Zombi 2, and sexpot Alexandra Delli Colli, The New York Ripper) into random acts of cannibalism within the city.  The investigation leads McCulloch, Delli Colli and company to a remote South Seas island where primitive cannibals roam free and a mad doctor (Donald O’Brien) works to create an army of undead slaves.

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Damnation Alley Blu-ray

June 20th, 2011 | article by | 1 Comment »
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Seeing as my wedding is less than five full days away, and that I’m necessarily pre-occupied with finalizing all the fineries of that, I had absolutely no intention of posting an article to Wtf-Film this week.  None.  But thanks to the enterprising folks at Shout! Factory I’ve been dragged up from the depths of my personal life to cover something really special – the gala Blu-ray premiere of Jack Smight’s cult sensation Damnation Alley.  Talk has been circulating for ages about possible DVD editions of this film, from Anchor Bay and others, but when Shout! announced their intentions to release it earlier this year I knew that I and other fans were in for something special.

For those as yet uninitiated, Damnation Alley is a loftily budgeted science fiction adventure film based (loosely) upon the novel of the same name by Roger Zelazny.  World War III has left the Earth tilted off its axis and beset by a constant meteorological holocaust, its bleak landscape brimming with menacing mutant wildlife.  After an accident leaves their quarters unlivable, a handful of surviving Air Force Missiliers set out across the wasteland in the mother of all all-terrain vehicles – the Landmaster – to find a new home.

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