Archive for the ‘Film Review’ Category


United Red Army

February 3rd, 2010 | article by | No Comments »
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a.k.a. jitsuroku rengo sekigun: Asama Sanso e no michi
(literal: United Red Army: Path to Asama Sanso)
rating:
company: Wakamatsu Production
year: 2007
runtime: 190′
country: Japan
director: Koji Wakamatsu
cast: Maki Sakai, Arata,
Akie Namiki, Go Jibiki,
Maria Abe, Anri Band,
Kenji Date, Yuki Fujii,
Yoshio Honda, Len Hisa
writers: Koji Wakamatsu,
Masayuki Kakegawa and Asako Otomo
cinematographers: Yoshihisa Toda
and Tomohiko Tsuji
music: Jim O’Rourke
order this film from Amazon.fr
(note: no English subtitles
on the French DVD)
visit the official site

Plot: Two radical left-wing paramilitary organizations form and join forces at the height of the Japanese student movement of the ’60s, leading to the infamous Asama-Sanso incident.

When ferociously independent and controversial director Koji Wakamatsu, (known for his combination of sex, extreme violence, and political subtext), chooses to make a film dramatizing one of the most tumultuous periods of recent Japanese history, it seems like a match made in cult cinema heaven.  Thankfully, it is.  Perhaps the biggest project of his lengthy and prolific career (over 100 directorial credits and counting), Wakamatsu mortgaged his own property and even destroyed his country home¹ to see that United Red Army was made, and while it may seem crude to those who only associate the word with huge Hollywood over-productions, his film is an epic in every way.

United Red Army is steeped in a history most Westerners will be completely unfamiliar with – that of the rise and self-destruction of the radical leftist Japanese student movement of the 1960s.  Born from the backlash over the signing of the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan in January of 1961, the movement turned from protests against tuition fee increases, bureaucratic malfeasance, and the Vietnam War into a violent movement devoted to a global revolution along the lines of China’s Cultural Revolution.

The opening reels of the film play as a documentary of those events, covering the major incidents (like the July 1968 occupation of Yasuda Hall at Tokyo University), their relationship to contemporary world events (the American Civil Rights movement and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., the massive French labor strikes of May 1968), as well as the rise of the Red Army Faction and the Revolutionary Left Faction, the two breakaway groups of the Japanese Communist Party that would coalesce into the United Red Army in July of 1971.  If it sounds a bit historically thick, that’s because it is.  The sequence plays in a fashion similar to Fukasaku’s Battles Without Honor or Humanity, complete with text noting the dates, major players, deaths, and arrest statistics.



There’s a lot to take in during United Red Army‘s first half hour, the news reel footage interspersed with brief dramatic inserts introducing the faction members we are to follow, but it’s all here with good reason.  Wakamatsu makes a concerted effort to ensure that his audience understands the postwar events and worldwide cultural turbulence that led to the chaotic formation and violent collapse of the student movement of the 60s, ensuring that we can sympathize with the revolutionaries as human beings even as the atrocities that fill the remaining two and a half hours of the film unfold.

As a drama, United Red Army begins with the truce between the RAF and RLF that leads to the formation of the paramilitary group of the title.  Intent on inciting a global communist revolution, the leaders gather their meager forces (there were only 29 members total) at obscure training camps to prepare for an all-out war against the Japanese government.  As the exercise moves forward, the leaders of the group enact a policy of self-critique that culminates in a violent purge of members deemed too weak-willed to contribute to the cause.  Between December 31st of 1971 and February 12th of 1972, 14 members died either directly at the hands of their fellow members or from prolonged exposure to the frigid mountain weather.

The hour of the picture devoted to the lynchings plays out as a grim tragedy, in which young men and women with high hopes and aspirations (misguided though they may be) are intimidated and eventually slaughtered by their comrades in the name of the cause.  The leadership of the group is seemingly boundless in their capacity to destroy, holding their soldiers to ever more stringent revolutionary guidelines and administering brutal justice to any who don’t comply.  There is no mercy to be found in a place where those sympathetic to the doomed are at risk of being doomed themselves.

Wakamatsu is as unflinching in his depictions of violence here as ever before, rising above baser exploitation and attaining a level of visceral horror in league with the final act of Pasolini’s Salo.  Most disturbing among them is the death of Toyama (star Maki Sakai), who is made to beat herself until her face is unrecognizable.  Wakamatsu refrains from showing the blows as they fall, allowing the entire grisly spectacle to unfold just beyond our range of sight.  Our first view of Toyama’s face is her own, peering into a mirror held by the leadership.  We see Toyama’s descent into madness as it happens, and the vision of her, swollen and bloody and screaming in a voice all but inhuman, is of the sort that can haunt someone forever.



Only the threat of discovery by the authorities brings the nightmare to a close, and the leadership orders that the group’s bases be deserted.  The surviving members split up, and while many are captured (including the leadership) five make their way to Mount Asama, taking over the Asama Mountain Lodge (the Asama Sanso of the Japanese title) and holding its manager Yasuko Muta hostage as police forces build outside.  We realize that the stand-off is hopeless from the start, and that the revolutionaries are destined to be captured or worse.  The absurdity of their purpose is extolled in a single line of dialogue, as one of the five members passionately explains that they are fighting against the police to initiate a global revolution.  The youngest of the five, just 16 years old, breaks down, recognizing that all the suffering and death that had come before (including that of his own brother) was meaningless.

The final act is perhaps the best of the film, a restrained look at the infamous Asama Sanso incident entirely from the perspective of those inside.  Other than a single helicopter watching from high in the sky, we never see the forces surrounding the lodge (Wakamatsu’s own house, destroyed during the process of filming¹), and the director keeps our focus squarely on the remaining militants and their hostage.  Wakamatsu accomplishes something extraordinary here, willing us to sympathize with these lost youths (even after the horrors they’ve wrought) while pulling no punches.  We know the end is inevitable, but as riot police storm the lodge we can’t help but imagine what could have been had their “we can change the world” idealism not become so perverted.

A brief epilogue brings United Red Army full circle and back into documentary mode, with scrolling text giving us the statistics of the Asama Sanso incident: 1635 riot police, 3126 canisters of tear gas, 326 smoke bombs, and nearly 16 tons of water.  We hear RAF leader Mori’s suicide note (he would die in prison on January 1, 1973 by his own hand²) and see the status of the other participants, most serving life sentences and several on death row.  An interesting side note is Kunio Bando (one of the five involved in the Asama Sanso stand off), released by demand of the Japanese Red Army after their take over of the US Embassy in Kuala Lumpur in August of 1975².  Writer and director Wakamatsu met Bando during a trip to the Middle East, and used his recollection of events as a basis from which to build his depiction of of the Asama Sanso incident¹.



Perhaps the most surprising thing about United Red Army is just how unbiased Wakamatsu remains throughout.  His sympathies consistently lie with the minority, the weak against the powerful, from the opening montages of the student revolts against tuition fee increases to the unfortunate fourteen whose lives were ended at the behest of the fascistic high command to the final stand off of five URA against an army of riot police.  The film plays as a respectful eulogy to the many who died and as a stark criticism of those in power, and thankfully refrains from vindicating any one political ideology over another.

Wakamatsu self-produced United Red Army for around $1 million US (100,000,000 Yen¹), and while the low budget shows at times (it looks to have been filmed digitally and the period aspects are all but lost in the early Tokyo-bound scenes) the picture as a whole is quite an achievement.  Once the URA members first trek to their training bases in Gunma prefecture the period details cease to be an issue, and Wakamatsu’s skills as a director really begin to shine.  The juxtaposition of the increasingly violent nature of the URA against the beauty of the mountain locations is stunning, the claustrophobic scenes of human destruction terrifying.  United Red Army is a haunting film, from the opening history to the final credits scrawl, with a fine score from Jim O’Rourke and exceptional sound design by Yukio Kubota.

For the first time in a long time I simply have no complaints, and United Red Army easily ranks as one of the best films that’s come out of Japan in half a decade.  It can also be a very difficult film to watch.  The genuinely troubling violence that dominates the second act will undoubtedly turn many away, and the shear mass of history involved is daunting.  That said, United Red Army is still a great film, and I can’t help but rate it as highly recommended.

1. Midnight Eye Interview: Koji Wakamatsu
2. A Chronology of JRA history


The Merciful Buddha

January 16th, 2010 | article by | No Comments »
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a.k.a. A Mi De Dao
company: Lin Hop Production Company
year: 1979
runtime: 92′
country: Taiwan
director: Tyrone Hsu Tien-Yung
cast: Chin Lung, Au-Yeung Ling-Lung,
Kao Yuen, Lung Tien-Hsiang,
Chang Chi-Ping, Wong Fei,
Chi Yuk-Sang
writer: Tyrone Hsu Tien-Yung
and Kuk Yun
cinematographer: Cheung Tak-Kon
original music: Wong Mau-Saan
not on home video in the USA

Plot: A lucky shape-shifting stone monkey escapes the village it brings good fortune to just before a major disaster destroys it.  It is captured in a bottle by two thieving practitioners of the dark arts, who use it to strike it rich.


The Merciful Buddha is just one out of the teaming multitude of odd low-budget Taiwanese period fantasies produced from the late 1970s onwards, and a particularly boring one at that (especially when compared to off-the-wall craziness like Thrilling Sword or War of the Wizards, both to be reviewed here shortly).  It’s not that the film doesn’t have weirdness to offer – there’s quite a bit of it, in fact, most of which will be revealed here in due course.  It’s just that said weirdness is too easily lost in the brick-dense melodrama that surrounds it.

The proceedings get off to a promising enough start, with an extraordinarily brief bit of kaiju-emulation.  The giant stone monkey overlooking a village decides that it’s had quite enough of this living-in-a-mountain business and escapes, briefly threatening to destroy a reasonably constructed period miniature.  Instead it shrinks to the size of a young chimpanzee (switching from a man-in-suit to, surprise surprise, a young chimpanzee) and lets an explosion of unknown origin do the work for him.  Either way, the miniature is left a fiery ruin, the giant monster fan in me satisfied, if only momentarily.

Aside from a reverse shot of the stone monkey taking its rightful place back atop a mountain at the end of the story, the rest of The Merciful Buddha is woefully monster free.  The focus is on a pair of thieves, who use the escaped stone monkey as their own special sort of get rich quick scheme.  They force the creature to shape shift into a black bear that, in turn, roams around town stealing everyone’s prized possessions.  The pair get richer and richer while those around them grow poorer and poorer – needless to say, something’s gotta give.

Eighteen years pass and a young fairy woman miraculously born just before the stone monkey escaped is on the hunt for her long lost mother, whom she hasn’t seen in the years since her village was destroyed.  Helping the young woman is a young man, raised by the two thieves after they, unbeknownst to him, killed his statesman parents.


From there the story is relatively predictable.  The young man discovers his adopted paretns’ thieving ways and sets out to make things right, stealing all their accumulated riches and dispersing them to the poor.  The two thieves soon turn on each other – one kills the other after he is caught trying to steal what little treasure is left behind.  The other is poetically slaughtered by a flock of sparrows in a bit of heavenly retribution (the man had previously prayed to Buddha, agreeing to a death by sparrow flock if he didn’t change his greedy ways).  The young fairy woman eventually finds her mother and ascends, along with her elderly father and newfound lover, to heaven.

The Merciful Buddha is more a period melodrama with fantasy trappings than an out-and-out fantasy picture, though its story is punctuated with typically bizarre elements of the genre (at least as it exists in mainland Asia).  The nature of the two thieves is revealed to the young man by, of all things, a horse with a human head that can see through time, and the end ascension shows the cast walking up to heaven on a rainbow.  The young fairy woman frequently exercises her fairy powers, most amusingly to convince a pair of hoodlums to slap themselves silly, and she is protected by an immortal who likes to exercise his own magical slapping powers.  It’s fun, to be sure, but not enough to keep the picture interesting as a whole.

Writer / director Tyrone Hsu Tien-Yung had seen reasonable success as a martial arts director for years before The Merciful Buddha went into production, and it’s a pity that the few hand-to-hand fights to be had here are so fleeting.  His handling of the drama is pretty dull all around – I doubt this was one of the high points of Tien-Yung’s (The Red Phoenix) career.  Other elements of the production are pretty standard.  Wong Mau-Saan provides the so-so score while an uncredited special effects crew does the best it can with the budget provided.

Though fun at times, The Merciful Buddha as a whole is average at best and dull at worst.  Given the relative difficulty to be had in tracking it down, genre enthusiasts are encouraged to spend their time hunting for more worthwile efforts.  Not recommended.



Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

December 21st, 2009 | article by | 1 Comment »
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postera.k.a. The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans
company: Millennium Films
and Saturn Films
year: 2009
runtime: 122′
country: United States
director: Werner Herzog
cast: Nicolas Cage, Val Kilmer,
Eva Mendes, Feiruza Balk,
Jennifer Coolidge, Brad Dourif,
Michael Shannon, Shawn Hatosy
writer: William M. Finkelstein
cinematographer: Peter Zeitlinger
music: Mark Isham
out in limited release
pre-order the film from Amazon.com:
DVD | Blu-ray

Warning: This review probably contains some spoilers.


Plot: A police lieutenant is hampered by drug addiction, local gangsters, and an ever-loosening grip on reality while heading up a homicide investigation in post-Katrina New Orleans.

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans is, in a word, unlikely.  A reboot in name only of the 1992 cult picture Bad Lieutenant produced more than 15 years after the fact with Nicolas Cage in the starring role and Werner Herzog in the director’s chair, its very conception seems suspect, and yet it’s here all the same.  Herzog has taken the script by William M. Finkelstein (writer for N.Y.P.D. Blue and L.A. Law, amongst other television shows) and made something special, a darkly comic tale of corruption, addiction, and redemption and one of the best films of the year.

Herzog’s sense of location is as impeccable as ever, and he makes the depopulated ruins of New Orleans parishes, crumbling in the shadows of the glass towers of the city proper and festering with all manner of crime, as much a character as any other in the film.  Set only a few months after the disaster of Katrina, Herzog’s New Orleans is a place already forgotten by those on the outside – a near-apocalyptic landscape that can’t help but be the birthplace of monsters.

One such monster is newly promoted police lieutenant Terence McDonagh (Cage), a pitiable creature whose chronic pain has led him into addictions to heroin, crack, and cocaine.  McDonagh is an undeniably talented officer, seen at one point single-handedly apprehending a suspect while a SWAT team waits outside, but his tunnel vision starts to get the better of him after his promotion.  As he tells a suspect he’s arresting, “it’s amazing how much you can get done when you’ve got a simple purpose guiding you through life.”  Unfortunately for McDonagh, securing a constant supply of illicit drugs has become that simple purpose.

Things go well for a while.  McDonagh subsists off the steady stream of cocaine and prescription drugs filtering into the evidence room of his department and even finds a kindred spirit and devoted lover in high-class prostitute Frankie (Mendes).  But the life can’t last, and soon he’s betting on football games with money he doesn’t have and getting in trouble with the local mob.  The hallucinations – particularly of ambivalent iguanas on stakeouts – don’t help.  McDonagh hits rock bottom hard, forced to make an uneasy allegiance with the local gangster responsible for the homicide he’s investigating after the case falls apart due to his own negligence.

Herzog keeps the audience aware of the fact that, in spite of all the snarling, screaming, and frequent insanity, McDonagh is ultimately just a decent human being in the midst of making the worst decisions of his life.  The accident that led to his chronic pain was the result of his rescuing a suspect, left behind after the waters began to rise -  no good deed goes unpunished.  Herzog allows McDonagh to commit (and get away with) truly despicable acts on the shaky road to redemption, but always leaves ample room for forgiveness, never letting McDonagh succumb to mortal sin.  The lieutenant  even goes so far as to save the life of murderous gangster Big Fate (Alvin “Xzibit” Joiner) from his depraved partner Stevie (Kilmer).

I never thought I’d find myself praising a performance from Nicolas Cage, but here it’s deserved.  Kudos to Herzog for allowing the actor to flex his professional muscles, which have gone so underserved by recent efforts like Next, Ghost Rider, The Wicker Man, and on and on and on.  Cage lurches through the film like an old-school Universal monster, retaining that all-important note of tragedy while on his drugged-out rampage.  It’s the best performance that’s been seen from the actor in years, and a welcome respite with crap like Ghost Rider 2 (I suppose even Cage has to eat) on the way.

Herzog keeps up his well-earned reputation for experimentation and even finds room to dabble with surrealism in Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans.  McDonagh’s highs are amplified with operatic outbursts of handi-cam wildlife close-ups (notably of an iguana and an alligator) while another  scene has the youthful soul of an aged hit man break dancing after the man himself is killed.  The ambiguous fish-tank ending will leave many viewers scratching their heads, though it seems entirely appropriate in the context of the film.  Herzog always has had an affinity for being strange just for the sake of being strange, and that’s just fine with me.

Teaming up with Herzog once again is cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger (Encounters at the End of the World, Wheel of Time, and Invincible to name a few), and his presence is welcome here.  Frequently working with natural light alone, Zeitlinger ensures Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans’ place as one of the best photographed pictures of the year.  Composer Mark Isham (Invincible, The Black Dahlia) provides the exceptional score, its themes rich in accoustic guitar and augmented with occasional explosions of harmonica.   Here’s hoping a CD release is on the way.

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans is out in limited release in the States with simultaneous Blu-ray and DVD releases slated for April of next year from distributor First Look Films (this article will be updated with a disc review at that time).  This is, for my money, one of the best films I’ve seen all year – old or new.  Herzog is still a master of the craft, and his latest comes very highly recommended.


2012

December 16th, 2009 | article by | No Comments »
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postercompany: Columbia Pictures
year: 2009
runtime: 158′
country: United States
director: Roland Emmerich
cast: John Cusack, Amanda Peet,
Chiwetel Ejiofor, Thandie Newton,
Oliver Platt, Thomas McCarthy,
Woody Harrelson, Danny Glover
writers: Roland Emmerich
and Harald Kloser
cinematographer: Dean Semler
out in wide release

Warning: This article probably contains some spoilers.


Plot: An increase in solar activity coupled with a rare galactic alignment showers Earth with neutrinos, heating up the core of the planet and causing its crust (and its magnetic poles) to catastrophically shift.  The world’s governments work together to preserve some semblance of humanity.

Roland Emmerich seems to have the dubious title of reigning king of the contemporary disaster genre, in spite of having only directed a few films on the subject.  His penchant for destruction on a global scale reaches dizzyingly absurd new heights in 2012, coupling a near bottomless production budget with a script that wouldn’t pass muster with a When Time Ran Out-era Irwin Allen with consistently hilarious and occasionally awe-inspiring results.

The narrative plays like a lopsided retread of the 1951 classic When Worlds Collide, only with pesky subatomic particles in the place of invading heavenly bodies.  Whereas the focus of that film was on the vast public works project to construct the humanity-saving space ark, 2012 zeros in on the disaster early and often – the ground quakes and oceans rise while familiar edifices of civilization crumble into oblivion.

Throughout Emmerich strives to retain a sense of immediacy, with the action revolving primarily about a broken family (Cusak, Peet, and McCarthy as a father, mother, and stepfather, with two preteen kids along for good measure) and their journey to save themselves.  That the father, a part-time chauffeur for a rich Russian and a full-time writer, has penned and published an under-appreciated apocalyptic science fiction novel with an optimistic conclusion ensures us that all the principle players will make it through just fine.  The catastrophe even offers up an opportunity to put Cusack and Peet’s marriage back on track, offing step-dad as soon as it’s expedient to the plot.

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Providing a secondary view on things is a government scientist (Ejiofor) with a kind heart an eye for the President’s daughter (Thandie Newton).  We also, briefly, glimpse things from the prospective of the President himself (an unlikely Danny Glover), himself lost when the USS John F. Kennedy comes tearing across the lawn of the White House.  Woody Harrelson even pops up in a minor but important supporting role as a crackpot radio host who just happens to know where Cusack and co. can find safety.

Most of 2012‘s drama falls pretty flat, from the forumlaic broken-family fantasy (the wife really still loves her old husband in spite of having remarried) to a half dozen or so people who realize too late that family ties are all that matter.  Characters plainly aren’t, with the accomplished cast struggling to provide them with any dimensionality at all, and most ultimately wind up as fodder for the apocalypse.  Here Emmerich presents with a certain cruelty, allowing numerous individuals to think they’ve reached salvation only to have the tables immediately turn on them.

In fact, there’s a nasty streak running through much of the destruction on display in 2012.  Emmerich takes obvious glee in plunging millions, even billions of people to their assorted dooms, including a pair of old ladies he sends crashing head-first into a wall for the minor sin of being in front of our escaping heroes.  Worse, he seems to want things both ways – tugging at our heartstrings with sad music and teary close-ups between shots of people trying to survive in torrents of debris before widening his scope so that we might revel in the shear spectacle of the thing.  It’s an uneasy combination, and one Emmerich isn’t nearly competent enough to pull off.  He’d have been better off forgetting such obvious attempts at garnering audience sympathy and just presenting his thrill-ride apocalypse for what it is – pure exploitation.

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Emmerich also seems to have a particular bent against the rich and powerful, apparently having realized that public opinion of both is scraping the bottom of the barrel in this time of recession.  The sentiment is no different than in the George Pal classic 2012 so obviously emulates.  The rich are condemned just for being so, even though the literal arks that save whatever is left of mankind are financed in large part by private backers.  That age-old government conspiracy subplot also rears its ugly head, and it takes our kind-hearted scientist to convince world leaders (all of them!) that they should do the right thing and save as many people as they can.

While the drama simmers at a low level throughout the rest of the narrative twists itself into impossible knots of contrivances.  We see not one, but three last-minute edge-of-your-seat plane takeoffs of the Independence Day variety, the outrunning of a pyroclastic flow by an RV, and even the shifting of an entire continent some thousands of miles just so our family can make it there reasonably unscathed.  The crowining absurd moment comes at the end, when an ark is threatened by a collision with a mountain.  What mountain, you ask?  Why Everest, of course!  In a film like this, no lesser peak will do.

I could gripe about this picture all day, but I won’t, because I was so damned entertained in spite of it all.  The expansive CGI work has been credited as “photo-realistic” by some, which is utter baloney, but that doesn’t keep it from being a world of fun just the same – it’s certainly one hell of a cartoon.  2012 explodes Yellowstone, sinks California, and wipes the rest of the world clean with gargantuan tsunamis before it hits the two hour mark.  It may struggle for momentum in the ark-bound final act out of a shear lack of more destroy, but memory of what came before is more than enough to pull one through to the end of things.

For Emmerich the world is obviously not enough (perhaps we’ll get a cataclysm on a galactic scale next go around).  I may lament its furthering of the popularity of the asinine doom-sayer lunacy surrounding the year in question, but I enjoyed 2012 for what it is – the kind of dumb loud entertainment only a hack like Emmerich can get away with (and he has, again, handily).  Art it isn’t, but recommended matinée viewing?  Absolutely.

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The Sexy Killer

December 14th, 2009 | article by | No Comments »
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postera.k.a. Du hou mi shi / The Drug Connection
company: Shaw Brothers
year: 1976
runtime: 88′
country: Hong Kong
director: Sun Chung
cast: Chen Ping, Yueh Hua,
Tung Lam, Si Wai, Wang Hsieh,
Tin Ching, Chan Shen
writer: Ki Kuang
cinematographer: Lam Nai-Choi
limited availability
(IVL disc is OOP)

Plot: A nurse whose sister is destroyed by the illegal drug industry poses as a prostitute and infiltrates the upper echelons of a Hong Kong gang in order to get her bloody revenge.

While my taste in film has shifted more towards the serious as of late (not that my reviews here do much to evidence this), there are times when nothing hits the spot like a good, trashy exploitationer.  Shaw Brothers’ The Sexy Killer is just such a film, careening through such saucy subjects as drugs, prostitution, and sado-masochistic sex on its way to a shotgun-fueled finale that plays like a candy colored scope re-envisioning of Bo Arne Vibenius’ Thriller – A Cruel Picture.

The story concerns Wanfei, a nurse in Hong Kong who gets a nasty wake up call when her younger sister is tempted into the sordid world of heroine abuse and sex trafficking.  Wanfei involves herself with a shady celebrity, whose strong public posturing against the exploding drug industry makes her blind to the fact that he’s nothing but a paid cover for the cartels, while simultaneously seeking her own revenge against the gangsters who defiled her sister.  Her policeman friend Weipin is fighting his own losing battle against corruption in the department, realizing that a presumed friend is on the cartel’s payroll only after his reputation for drug busting almost gets him killed.

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It doesn’t take long for Wanfei to find out that drastic action is required if she’s to move up in the ranks of the mob, and she begins moonlighting as a prostitute for the higher ups.  She’s found out when an attempt on the life of the Boss of the operation (a sexual sadist with a dungeon in the back of his bedroom) goes wrong, and dragged off to the edge of the city for disposal.  But it’ll take more than a few moronic henchmen to stop this lady scorned and it isn’t long before she’s driving right through the front door of the Boss’ house, blasting holes the size of dinner plates into every gangster she can find.

The Sexy Killer is a prototypical Shaw Brothers exploitation vehicle, of which they produced a slew throughout the ’60s and ’70s along with their better known martial arts product.  One can expect to see lots of bare human flesh by the end of things, much of it belonging to lead Chen Ping.  The company obviously understood the dual functionality of the heroine, and the intended audience should have no trouble getting behind Ping’s lust for vengeance while oodling over her extensive physical charms.  The highlight of the picture is inarguably her delivery of deliciously violent final justice, and I can think of few actresses capable of handling a shotgun so deftly while donning a pink polka-dotted dress.

Keeping things interesting in the dry spells between senseless acts of depravity are a stable of unusual characters made all the more unusual by the audaciousness of the performances behind them.  Wang Hsieh (the Professor in The Super Inframan) steals the show as the depraved Boss, gleefully twirling his cane betwixt the legs of his favorite whore and whipping her while who-knows-what spools through a collection of film projectors in his bedroom.  Just as memorable is Tin Ching as the happy-go-lucky sex trafficker Ma-Yuan, who gets his just deserves when Wanfei convinces the Boss of his usurptuous intentions.

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Direction by Sun Chung is as adept as necessary for the material in question (scripted by Ki Kuang, Human Lanterns), and he keeps the material from becoming draggy even in the slower spots.  Cinematography by Lam Nai-Choi (director, The Story of Ricky) is questionable, and his overuse of wide angle lenses often gives the impression that we’re watching a film shot through a goldfish bowl – not that it does a thing to dampen The Sexy Killer‘s potential to entertain.

There’s only one DVD release of The Sexy Killer I’m currently aware of, from IVL’s extensive line of Region 3 Shaw Brothers titles.  The disc presents the film in a decent, if slightly soft, anamorphic widescreen transfer in the original 2.35:1 Shaw Scope ratio.  Audio is Mandarin, augmented with optional English and Chinese subtitles.  Extras are typical – stills, production notes, and a collection of trailers for other IVL releases.  The disc is currently listed as being temporarily out of print by the company, though copies are still easy enough to come by on eBay.

I enjoyed the hell out of this one, though my mindset at the time undoubtedly had a lot to do with it.  This is trash, pure and simple, but of the brightly colored and irresistible variety only the Shaw Brothers can provide.  Keep your expectations in check and know what you’re in for – the screenshots here should be enough to convince of whether or not The Sexy Killer is for you.  As for me, this one comes recommended.

009


A Dream Come True

December 7th, 2009 | article by | No Comments »
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postera.k.a. Mechte Navstrechu / Begegnung im All
company: Odessa Film Studios
year: 1963
runtime: 64′
country: USSR
directors: Mikhael Karzhukov
and Otar Koberidze
cast: Larisa Gordeichik, Boris Borisenko,
Otar Koberidze, Peeter Kard, A. Genesin,
V. Yanpavlis, Nikolai Timofeyev,
Nikolai Volkov, T. Pochepa
writers: A. Berdnik, Ivan Bondin,
Mikhail Karzhukov, and Otar Koberidze
Not on home video in the USA
order (German, no subs) from Amazon.de

Plot: An alien race from the planet Centurian hears a radio transmission from Earth and attempts to fly here.  Their mission goes horribly wrong, and Earth scientists – having heard their distress call – embark on a rescue mission to Mars, where it is believed the Centurians have crash landed.

This is another of those obscure Soviet science fiction epics whose American distribution rights were purchased on the cheap by Roger Corman, who culled them of special effects footage and re-edited them into ultra low-budget exploitation vehicles.  The ample effects work of A Dream Come True will be most familiar to domestic audiences for its inclusion in the cheapie space vampire flick Queen of Blood (or Planet of Blood, or Planet of Terror, which also used footage from the earlier The Heavens Call, which had previously been edited into Battle Beyond The Sun), though the film itself has never been given a proper English-language release.

A Dream Come True, directed by The Heavens Call‘s Mikhael Karzhukov and actor / writer Otar Koberidze, operates at a lower dramatic level than the more renowned Soviet Bloc efforts like The Silent Star.  Essentially an extended daydream of star Larisa Gordeichik (as cosmonaut Tanya), the extraodrinarily brief picture has little in the way of drama to drive it along.  The closest one comes to finding conflict among the cast is when an old professor postulates that the extraterrestrials of the film may be hostile, a belief not held by the younger generation of scientists and cosmonauts.  A Dream Come True postulates a world in which Soviet ideals have apparently been accepted worldwide, and in which conflict between nations no longer exists.

The opening treats us to a montage of scientists living in the near-utopian community of a space institute by the sea.  There they spend their days swimming, sailing, painting, and singing happy songs about how great things would be if the Universe would band together in friendship.  It is one of these songs that is heard by the beings of the planet Centurian, and its hopeful message what convinces them that us Earthlings are worth the trouble of visiting.  Their radio signals unintelligible to Earth scientists, the older of the academic community (remembering the wars of the past, no doubt) are concerned about their possible intentions.  But the younger generation is convinced that such intelligent beings could only have peace in mind, and no time is wasted in mounting a rescue mission when the Centurian spaceship crash lands on Mars.

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Slow to build, A Dream Come True gets moving once the Earth rescue mission – spearheaded by the new rocketship Ocean – is underway.  Problems are encountered almost immediately, as the ship uses most of its available atomic fuel in surviving an unexpected solar flare-up.  Their landing on Mars is successful, though fuel reserves may be too low to allow a return trip.  Worse, their investigation of the crashed Centurian craft reveals that its only cosmonaut is dead.  A search for possible survivors is quickly mounted, resulting in a second ship travelling to Mars so that video satellites can be put into orbit around the planet to aid in the search.  This ship, too, encounters trouble, and is forced to land on Mars’ moon Phobos.

A relatively standard self-sacrifice-in-the-name-of-science subplot is implanted here, as an alien survivor is discovered on Phobos.  The emergency transport aboard the second ship can only carry two people and the additional fuel for Ocean’s return trip, so one of its two person crew – Tanya the cosmonaut’s lover – is left behind to die.  After much wandering amidst the wind-whipped dunes of Mars the Centurian and the surviving cosmonaut reach Ocean safely, where it is revealed for certain that the space visitors have come in peace.

There is certainly some irony in the juxtaposition of the practices of the Cold War Soviet Union and A Dream Come True‘s message of peace and universal harmony (it was released a scant few months after the conclusion of the Cuban Missile Crisis).  It’s narrative is obviously highly propagandic, espousing not just hope but certainty that a future dominated by the USSR’s communist ideals would be a vibrant one full of untold scientific wonders.  The Soviets were doing quite well in the space race at the time, having launched both the first Earth-orbiting satellite and the first man into space – the great meeting place at the space institute in the film is named Gagarin Square in the latter’s honor.  Interest in the Soviet space program was, naturally, high among citizens, and films like A Dream Come True undoubtedly played very well with domestic audiences.

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All dramatic inertness and idealism aside, the real reason to see A Dream Come True is its exceptional special effects production.  The space race being big news at the time, production companies in the Soviet Union spared few expenses in bringing their visions of interplanetary exploration to the screen and the results typical bested those of contemporary efforts from elsewhere in the world.  A Dream Come True can boast expansive matte effects, impressive alien vistas (the arresting view of Mars from Phobos for example), and some of the finest ship design in all of sci-fi-dom.  The Centurian culture is full of ethereal light and smooth edges, evoking a society that has moved far beyond the purely technical and merged the fields of art and science completely.

There is no domestic DVD release of A Dream Come True in sight, though First Run Features’ 2005 boxed set of DEFA space films did leave me with some hope that other Eastern bloc sci-fi might someday make it to these shores.  Filling the void for now is German DVD outfit Icestorm Distribution, who released the film in its slightly trimmed and DEFA-dubbed East German variant Begegnung im All in June of this year.  While in German with no subtitles, the PAL disc presents an exceptional transfer of the film and is highly recommended to collectors and serious science fiction enthusiasts.  Extras include an image gallery and a theatrical trailer.

The drama may be inert and the preponderence of former-Soviet ideals grating, but A Dream Come True‘s exceptional special effects and production design will be enough to make it compelling viewing for genre fans.  Here’s hoping it receives a proper English-friendly home video release somewhere down the line.  Highly recommended.

009


The End of the World

December 5th, 2009 | article by | No Comments »
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postera.k.a. Verdens Undergang
company: Nordisk Film Co.
year: 1916
runtime: 77′
country: Denmark
director: August Blom
cast: Olaf Fonss, Ebba Thomson,
Johanne Fritz-Petersen, Alf Blutecher,
Thorleif Lund, Frederick Jacobson,
K. Zimmerman, Carl Lauritzen
writer: Otto Rung
not on home video in the USA
order this film (double feature with A Trip
to Mars, 1918) from the Edition Filmmuseum Shop

Plot: A newly discovered comet enters the Earth’s atmosphere and destroys Europe.

The Danish Film Institute has restored a wealth of silent treasures over the past few years, including the odd 1918 science fiction adventure A Trip to Mars and the Titanic-inspired 1913 drama Atlantis among others, and released them to DVD with both the original Danish and translated English intertitles.  DFI’s 2006 restoration of August Blom’s The End of the World is a revelation, showing that cinema’s fascination with destruction on a cosmic scale is almost as old as the medium itself.

Comparisons between Blom’s film, inspired by the devestation of World War I (still raging at the time) and the recent panic surrounding the reappearence of Halley’s Comet in 1910, and Abel Gance’s unfinished La Fin du Monde, which went into production some 12 years later, are too tempting to resist.  The basic narratives of both films are quite similar, and involve a young woman stolen from her impoverished lover by a wealthy man who takes advantage of an Earth-threatening crisis to strike it rich in the stock market (which crashes in both as well).  Each also ends with a spectacular display of destruction, in both cases caused by the near passage of a comet.  Missing here are the hefty dollops of socio-political and religious subtext present in the Gance picture which, though never completed, saw release in France and American in 1931 and 1934 respectively.

Gance credited the 1893 Camille Flammarion science fiction novel La Fin du Monde with inspiring his work, though one can’t help but wonder if he ever saw Blom’s earlier film.  On that note, it’s also entirely possible that Blom and writer Otto Rung could have been inspired in part by the Flammarion novel or even some of his odd scientific predictions.  In 1910 he was one of the proponents of the idea that poisonous gas from the tail of Halley’s Comet would “impregnate [the Earth's] atmosphere and possibly snuff out all life on the planet” (from an article here).  Yikes.

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Whoever or whatever inspired which film, The End of the World is a great time regardless.  The story concerns a family, a father and two sisters, living in a mining town.  Dina (Ebba Thomson) is betrothed to miner Flint (Thorleif Lund), but is whisked from her hometown and into the lap of luxury by the exorbinantly wealthy and devoted Stoll (Olaf Fonss) before they can be married.  Her aging father curses her betrayal of the family name, refusing to forgive her transgression even on his death bed.  Sister Edith (Johanne Fritz-Peterson) is happier with small town life, and falls for seaman Reymers (Alf Blutecher).  Years go by, with Dina living in the city with Stoll, who has become even more successful, and Edith patiently watching as Reymers moves up the chain of command to become First Mate.

Things get complicated when Professor Wisemann, a cousin of Stoll, discovers a new comet and calculates its Earth-bound trajectory.  The discovery and its potentially disastrous ramifications cause panic, and the stock market collapses.  Stoll, sensing an incredible opporutnity, buys up as many shares as he can, then bribes the editor of The Times into reporting that the comet poses no danger – even as it becomes visible to the naked eye.  The stock market rises, Stoll collects, and the couple returns to the mining town for a ritzy party (not nearly so risque as Gance’s upper-class orgy, though there is a floor show) before doomsday.  Flint, frustrated with his lower-class lifestyle and still angry with Stoll for stealing his bride-to-be, organizes a mob and attacks the party, tragically killing his beloved Dina in the process.  The comet arrives shortly thereafter, unleashing all manner of havoc and killing both Stoll and Flint in dramatic fashion.

The End of the World shifts gears towards the uplifting immediately after the comet’s rampage is concluded.  Only Edith and a priest survive from the mining town, though Edith’s lover Reymers has survived at sea.  The heartwarming conclusion sees Edith and Reymers reunited, drawn to each other by church bells.  Just what future they have in amidst all the devestation is unclear, though the ending image of the couple knealing and looking heavenwards assures us that the humble will be rewarded for their suffering now that all the wicked have perished (okay, so maybe there’s a little religious subtext, but it is the end of the world).

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August Blom’s direction is typical of the time period, meaning every scene is captured from a single camera with a bit of horizontal shifting if necessary.  The most interesting moments come when Blom is forced off set and on location, as when Stoll is surveying a mine or Reymers is out to sea.  It is at these times, under less controlled circumstances, that he and his crew were forced to be more creative with generally excellent results.  Credit is certainly due for Blom’s apt handling of the lengthy destruction sequences here.  The production’s budget was obviously of the higher order, and most of the effects on display are of the full-scale variety.  Buildings burn, fire rains from the sky, and the sea rises to engulf the low ground, with people scurrying in all directions in an attempt to survive.  It’s all rather impressive, even in this age of no-holds-barred computer wizardry.

The Danish Film Institute’s restoration of The End of the World is excellent, far better than I would have anticipated for an obscure film of this vintage.  Presented on a double-feature DVD with the strange but loveable A Trip to Mars, The End of the World is transferred in the original full frame ratio with dual-language Danish and English intertitles and fine piano accompaniment by Ronen Thalmay.  The disc’s PAL encoding may prove troublesome for some, but all of you readers under the NTSC standard should have a region and code-free DVD setup by now anyway (trust me, if I can afford it you can afford it).  There are no extras, but this package is well worth picking up for the two films alone.

The End of the World was a wonderful surprise for this reviewer, who hasn’t seen nearly as many silent films as he rightfully should have at this point.  It may be melodramatic and antiquated and even a little bit silly, but its apocalyptic end reel still makes for compelling viewing over 90 years later.  Highly recommended.

009


Crocodile

December 2nd, 2009 | article by | 3 Comments »
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postera.k.a. Chorake
company: Chaiyo Productions
year: 1981
country: Thailand / USA
director: Sompote Sands
cast: Nat Puvanai, Tany Tim,
Angela Wells, Kirk Warren
producers: Robert Chan
and Dick Randall
Order this film from Amazon.com

Plot: A doctor and his friend hunt down and kill a giant sea-dwelling crocodile after it devours the rest of their immediate family and goes on a rampage through the waterways of Thailand.

This has to be the best known (at least as far as the Western world is concerned) of all the films made by Sompote Sands’ defunct Chaiyo Productions, thanks largely to the participation of exploitation producer extraordinaire Dick Randall (The Pod People, Slaughter High, and For Y’ur Height Only to name a few).  Crocodile had the good fortune to be dubbed into English and given an international release throughout Europe and in the United States, where it earned the ire of the American Humane Association for its un-simulated animal violence.  It was even officially released to DVD here, albeit in poor quality, in 2002, having been previously made available in video rental shops on the EMI label.

A rip-off of Spielberg’s Jaws but with Sands own peculiar interpretation of Japan’s giant monster films to guide it, Crocodile is a strange bit of ’80s exploitation nonsense.  The majority of the crocodile effects appear to have originated with the Thai / South Korean co-production Agowa Gongpo from 1978, another film about a mammoth crocodile pestering Southeast Asia whose effects were handled by Chaiyo Productions.  The reasoning behind Crocodile‘s own giant monster is, naturally, atomic testing in the Pacific.  Just how big the beast may be is difficult to gage, as the full-scale props rarely match up with themselves, much less the footage of a live crocodile wandering aimlessly about miniature sets.

I’ve not seen Agowa Gongpo and can’t speak for how much rampaging giant crocodile footage was produced for it, though it obviously wasn’t enough for Sands to wrap a second film around.  Viewers will note that Crocodile‘s crocodile attacks the same riverside village twice, setting the same buildings afire and sending the same Western tourists scurrying to their deaths in the water.  Sands also lifts judisciously from his earlier non-monster disaster effort Pandin Wippayoke, crafting a montage out of the typhoon and earthquake based destruction effects found there to give Crocodile‘s opening more punch.

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To Chaiyo and Sands’ credit, most of the miniature effects work on display is quite good – at least comparable to that seen in the Shaw Brothers-produced The Mighty Peking Man a few years earlier.  The earthquake and typhoon effects from Pandin Wippayoke fare especially well, as does the crocodile’s attack on the reverside village.  There’s a nice mix of full-scale building collapses and miniature work there, as well as some neat shots of a crocodile-created maelstrom of blood, debris, and human bodies.  Footage featuring a real crocodile crisscrossing miniature village scapes doesn’t fare so well, with the shaky and out-of-focus photography indicating that the effects crew had no idea what direction the critter was going to head off in next.

There are a few genuinely fun moments to be had along the way.  One involves a group of scuba divers laying a giant underwater bear trap for the giant crocodile, a plan that backfires when said crocodile sends the trap sailing through the tree tops like an enormous saw blade.  The confusing non-excitement of the ending ocean battle is punctuated with ludicrous shots of the monster doing impossible Free Willy-esque jumps out of the ocean and over a boat.  The fun is tempered somewhat by the fact that none of these moments are likely to be original to Crocodile, but in the land of Sompote Sands one has to take his amusement where he can.

The drama that surrounds the piles of culled effects footage is of Sands’ typically abysmal standards.  Crocodile is nothing if not an exercise in economy, and much of the non-effects runtime is taken up by lengthy shots of ambulances carrying victims of the crocodile attacks from one location to another.  The primary dramatic impetus is provided by a sparsely written tale of revenge, in which two doctors resign their positions in a city hospital to hunt the crocodile after it eats their families while they’re vacationing.  Dialogue is so sporadic and unfocused that viewers will often have to wait until the scene after the one they’re watching to find out just what our characters were up to.

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Side stories are few and, thankfully, brief.  The owner of the boat the doctors charter appears, initially, to be of some import – introducing himself by showing the tattoo of an eagle he has on his chest and repeating some crap family legend about a monster being killed by a bird.  He gets drunk, falls off the boat, and is devoured before any good can come of him.  A performer in a crocodile show and his manager are present for two scenes and for no reason other than to pad the running time, as neither do anything at all.  Especially odd in the dramatic department is the last-minute arrival of a news photographer, who pulls up to the doctors’ boat while they’re out to sea.  The annoying newsman turns out to be an unlikely hero, strapping lit dynamite to himself and jumping into the gaping maw of the crocodile at the film’s end.  Only one of the doctors appears to survive the ordeal, though Sands never lets us know for sure.  As far as he was concerned the film was over as soon as the crocodile went kaboom, story be damned.

Crocodile is seriously marred by a couple of Sands’ usual shock scenes.  A perfectly good sequence in which the crocodile molests a herd of water buffalo is punctuated with a shot of one of them urinating all over itself while clenched in the monster’s jaws (just in case you didn’t catch that it was dying).  The American Human Association seems to have been particularly peaved by a brief crocodile show sequence, in which a showman happily lifts one of the reptiles up for the audience to see before plunging a knife deep into its neck and eviscerating it as it squirms, still very much alive.  Sands may not gloat over the dying animal for so long as Lenzi or Deodato would in their cannibal efforts, but it’s a gruesome sight all the same.

I’ve not seen the VCI DVD of Crocodile from 2002, but online appraisals show it to be a pretty pathetic affair (fitting, really, for the film at hand).  The transfer is widescreen but non-anamorphic and apparently sourced from tape, and extras are minimal.  The out of print disc currently demands high prices (from $27 to over $100) at Amazon.com, so I’ve linked in to the less expensive VHS release above.  If you’re going to see this one you may as well see it cheap.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that Crocodile turned out to be just another dull, stupid, poorly-conceived Sompote Sands film punctuated with amusing effects tidbits of highly variable quality.  I don’t know why I keep watching them, other than out of some kind of morbid car-wreck fascination – rest assured that I have more fine Chaiyo productions lined up for future coverage.  See Crocodile for the effects work if you must, but my best advice is to simply avoid it and give your well-worn tape of Alligator another spin instead.  Not recommended.

009


The Beyond

November 30th, 2009 | article by | 2 Comments »
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postera.k.a. E tu Vivrai nel Terrore – L’aldila / Seven Doors of Death
company: Fulvia Film
year: 1981
runtime: 87′
country: Italy
director: Lucio Fulci
cast: Catriona MacColl, David Warbeck,
Cinzio Monreale, Antoine Saint-John,
Veronica Lazar, Anthony Flees,
Giovanni De Nava, Al Cliver
writers: Dardano Sachetti,
Giorgio Mariuzzo, and Lucio Fulci
cinematographer: Sergio Salvati
order this film from Amazon.com

Plot: Young New Yorker Liza (MacColl) inherits a rundown hotel in New Orleans and decides to re-open it.  Strange events surround the renovations, and Liza, with the help of doctor friend John (Warbeck) and a strange blind woman named Emily (Monreale), soon discovers that her inheritance is built atop one of the seven dreaded doorways to hell.

This long-time favorite has somehow escaped coverage on this site in any of its disparate forms over the years, but with a review of the astoundingly dreadful demi-Fulci opus Zombi 3 now up for mass consumption I figured it was high time to rectify that gross oversight.  The Beyond is part two of the thematically similar but narratively distant non-trilogy of supernatural horrors Fulci directed between 1980 and 1981, bookended by the Lovecraftian gore fest City of the Living Dead and the Freudian The House by the Cemetery.

Previously known for sex comedies (The Eroticist), spaghetti westerns (Four of the Apocalypse), and a spate of violent gialli (Seven Notes in Black), Fulci’s freshman horror effort was the competent if intellectually barren Zombie – a project that earned him considerable name recognition within the genre and gave new direction to his waning career.  For the next several years Fulci would be at the top of the Euro-horror food chain, allowed to persue whatever intellectual interests he wanted with his pictures provided they came packaged with the ludicrous gore setpieces he was known for.

Artist / actor / writer / philosopher Antonin Artaud and his “Theater of Cruelty” had long been an inspiration for the director, and The Beyond owes its perceived incoherence to the concept.  Believing that the imagined was as much a part of reality as the tangible, Artaud’s concept was to reveal truth, and shatter what he saw as the false reality audiences were expecting, through production and performance.  For Fulci this meant focusing on image and atmosphere to evoke strong reactions in audiences, narrative coherence be damned.  The Beyond may begin as a simple haunted house yarn, but it veers into the bizarre early and powers down the rabbit hole from there.

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The plot, very loosely detailed above, is calculated for confusion.  The basic narrative, in which Liza tries to uncover the history of the haunted house she’s inherited, is never completely derailed, only invaded from all sides by the unknown.  Like Fulci’s earlier City of the Living Dead, The Beyond presents audiences with a reality in the process of being torn apart.  Much like Lovecraft’s own, Fulci’s unknown is an intangible yet malevolent force just waiting for a chance to come crawling out of the woodwork (or a hole in the basement) to wreak unimaginable horror on the world at large.  The Lovecraftian inspiration backing Fulci’s work here is obvious, and he throws a mysterious text titled The Book of Eibon into the proceedings as homage to the author.

The script, by Dardano Sachetti (Zombie), Giorgio Mariuzzo (The House by the Cemetery), and Fulci, is populated with strange side characters – two housekeepers that came with the hotel, a doctor investigating post-death brain activity, a potentially possessed little girl, and others – with occasionally questionable and frequently unknown motivations.  Housekeeper Arthur seems perpetually sweaty and nervous, and rummages around Liza’s bedroom in his spare time.  Housekeeper Martha just behaves creepily, wandering around a flooded basement with an oil lamp and giving knowing glances to the plumber who comes to fix the mess.  The potentially-possessed girl seems relatively harmless until after a funeral, when she suddenly presents with the same blind and shattered eyes as Emily.

The blind Emily is obviously a denizen of Fulci’s hell, though her purpose on Earth is unclear.  After hinting at awful things to come and confusing poor Liza into a state of panic she is confronted by the undead painter / warlock Schweik (Antoine Saint-John, Duck You Sucker) and his swiftly growing mob of the recently deceased.  She is quick to let him know that she’s done what she was supposed to do, though the audience is left in the dark as to just what that may be.  None of the side characters serve much in the way of narrative importance, they’re just intriguing stepping stones between the outrageously violent gags that serve as the meat to The Beyond‘s potatoes.

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Fulci must have had a field day conceptualizing the multitude of horrendous ways in which the supporting cast is dispensed with.  Liza’s property manager is gruesomely devoured by talkative tarantulas while the aforementioned potentially-possessed girl is chased by the malevolent red goo that’s left of her mother, whom she saw dissolved by a conveniently placed (and ludicrously full) canister of acid just moments before.  The blind Emily survives the onslaught of Schweik and his zombie minions only to be ripped to pieces by her once faithful German shepherd.  In perhaps the best gag of them all, a zombie is seen rising from a bathtub to attack Martha as she cleans a bathroom.  He grabs the poor woman by the face, taking careful aim before planting the back of her head on a nail and sending one of her eyes popping out of its socket.

Make-up effects man Gianetto de Rossi (The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue) is in top form here and his fine craftsmanship merges perfectly with Fulci’s eye for detail, elevating the Techniscope terrors of The Beyond to a strange sort of art.  Rarely has explicit violence been rendered with such aesthetic prowess, and there’s beauty to be had among the liters of expended stage blood.  Perhaps more interesting to me after the dozens of times I’ve seen the film is the uniquely cruel Fulcian humor that constantly bubbes just below the surface.  That the gateway to hell under Lisa’s hotel is opened by a nosy plumber (named Joe, of course) is on the verge of being parodic, and the sight of Emily fumbling about in a circle of unseen assailants feels like a particularly malicious prank.

The Beyond has seen a huge resurgence in popularity in the USA since the 1990′s, thanks to a theatrical reissue from Grindhouse Releasing and Tarantino’s Rolling Thunder and subsequent releases on home video through Anchor Bay.  Those home video releases are now long out of print, but Grindhouse Releasing filled the void by re-releasing The Beyond to DVD, with a newly remastered transfer to boot, in October of 2008.  I’ve not seen that disc (am waiting on the eventual jump to Blu-ray since I already own the OOP Anchor Bay disc), but online reviews attest that it is up to the high standards Grindhouse has set for itself since the 2005 special edition of Cannibal Holocaust.

Heralded by many as Fulci’s masterpiece, The Beyond is one strange customer.  It asks many questions in its 87 minutes and answers almost none of them, and the ambiguous ending will surely leave many scratching their heads.  But no one has ever captured the vision of all literal hell loosed upon the modern world like Fulci did, and The Beyond is a showcase for an underrated director at the height of the second wave of his career.  Highly recommended.

009


The Road

November 28th, 2009 | article by | No Comments »
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poster

theatrical poster, copyright 2009 Dimension Films

company: Dimension Films
year: 2009
runtime: 112′
country: United States
director: John Hillcoat
cast: Viggo Mortensen, Kodi Smit-McPhee,
Robert Duvall, Guy Pearce, Molly Parker,
Michael K. Williams, Charlize Theron
writer: Joe Penhall, from the
novel by Cormac McCarthy
cinematography: Javier Aguirresarobe
order the novel from Amazon.com
The Road is currently in theatres in the USA

Plot: A father and son wander the blasted remnants of the United States after an unnamed cataclysm destroys civilization and most life on Earth.

It’s always unfortunate when the best word I can think of to describe a new film is “underwhelming”.  That’s not to say that John Hillcoat’s film isn’t a noble attempt at bringing the award-winning Cormac McCarthy source novel from 2006 to the screen, but I couldn’t help but feel that twinge of dissatisfaction when the end credits finally rolled.

To be fair, The Road gets plenty right.  The major success of the picture is in its depiction of the apocalyptic landscape the unidentified father and son (Mortensen and Smit-McPhee respectively) traverse.  Cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe (Goya’s Ghosts and, it pains me to say, the latest entry in the Twilight series) captures the many locations (from Pennsylvania to the truly other-worldly Mount St. Helens, looking as much like the end of the world as it did the summer of 1980) brilliantly and allows Hillcoat to present his desolate world with a minimum of computer trickery.

As important as the cinematography is the sound design.  There is near constant noise, be it of wind, rain, or the deep rumblings of a world still in the process of tearing itself apart.  When coupled with Aguirresarobe’s images and an understated score from Nick Cave and Warren Ellis the illusion is complete, and I doubt any viewer will be able to argue that The Road‘s vision of the sunless gray future is anything less than unsettling.

There’s also nothing overtly wrong with The Road‘s depiction of its sparse drama.  The father and son encounter a number of threats throughout, including a family who keeps people huddled like animals in their basement while slowly harvesting their limbs for food, but violence is kept to a minimum.  The high points of the story are undoubtedly the few quiet moments in which the father and son are simply allowed to be themselves, given brief respite from the dangers we know could be lurking just beyond their, and our, range of sight.

The father is understandably protective, dedicating his life to the survival of his son after his wife commits suicide, and is instinctively distrustful of anyone who crosses their path.  Aware that he is dying, the father knows that his ability to fulfill his duty is dwindling as much as their arsenal – a single pistol loaded with their last two rounds of ammunition.  He sees a glimmer of hope for the future  in the naiveté of his son, who wishes to help everyone they pass (a thief, a dying old man), but realizes the immense danger it poses in this harsh new reality.  As far the father is concerned, charity is dead.

Both Mortensen and Smit-McPhee work well in their respective roles.  Their performances are honest, and neither succumbs to the temptation to be overly dramatic.  Other characters are few and far between, and most have no lines at all.  A fine exception is Robert Duvall as an elderly man named Eli, near death and almost blind, who is invited to stay with the father and son for a night.

That so much is right with The Road makes it all the harder for me to place just what is wrong with it.  I’ve not read McCarthy’s source so I can’t speak for how faithfully it was adapted here (I know that the role of the mother is expanded considerably, albeit in flashback).  There just seems to be something missing from the equation, something that keeps all of The Road‘s accomplishments from coalescing into a satisfying whole.  It’s a picture that strives hard for depth and resonance, but that rings hollow in the end.

Dimension has pushed back the release for The Road numerous times over the past year and a half, and its latest push to the 25th of this month is assumed in some circles to be an attempt at improving its Oscar potential.  Perhaps the Weinsteins are hoping for a repeat of No Country for Old Men‘s earlier Academy Award success.  There is certainly some buzz surrounding the film’s release, and the theatre I screened it in was relatively packed (even at 6 in the evening the day after Thanksgiving).  The audience seemed pretty approving of the production by and large, though a group of three (out of 200 or so) did leave early on – never to return.

Don’t let the rather intangible concerns espoused above dissuade you if you’re looking forward to this one, as The Road is undeniably a good film and a fine alternative to the artless spectacles of destruction that typically populate the corners of the multiplex (sorry, no explosions here).  It just isn’t a great film, which I was perhaps unjustly expecting after the Coen brothers’ previous McCarthy adaptation.  The Road comes recommended, but keep those pesky expectations in check.


Zombi 3

November 23rd, 2009 | article by | 5 Comments »
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postera.k.a. Zombie Flesh Eaters 2
company: Flora Film
year: 1988
runtime: 95′
country: Italy / Philippines
directors: Lucio Fulci, with
Bruno Mattei and Claudio Fragasso
cast: Deran Saradian, Beatrice Ring,
Ottaviano Dell’Acqua, Massimo Vanni,
Ulli Reinthaler, Marina Loi
writers: Claudio Fragasso
and Rossella Drudi
order this film from Amazon.com
single disc |  boxed set

Plot: A rag-tag bunch of soldiers and college kids try to survive a zombie apocalypse in the Philippines and the hazmat-suited death squads sent out by the Army to contend with it.

There was at least some potential for decency, if not greatness, to be had with ZOMBI 3.  Producer Franco Gaudenzi, looking to tap into the post-RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD popularity of the genre by creating a name sequel in the unofficial ZOMBI franchise, at least had the courtesy to bring in horror maestro Lucio Fulci to oversee things.  It’s unfortunate that the project went downhill as quickly as they apparently did, leaving whatever potential the film had woefully untapped. “I don’t repudiate any of my movies except ZOMBI 3,” Fulci said in a 1995 interview.  “It has been done by a group of idiots.”

What idiots, you ask?  Fulci mentions three by name – directors Claudio Fragasso and Bruno Mattei, who took over the completion of the project after Fulci abandoned it (due to health concerns some say), and production manager Mimmo Scavia, whom the director says was more interested in chasing Filipino girls than in his job on the film.  It is reported that only fifty or so minutes of the footage Fulci directed remains in the film.  The rest is the work of Fragasso and Mattei, the pair previously responsible for the mind-numbing HELL OF THE LIVING DEAD.

While Fulci seems content with his usual gore gags, including a marvellous flying zombie head that pops out of a refrigerator and mauls a young man to death, and a few self-referential moments, Fragasso and Mattei seem confused as to what earlier films they should mine for ideas.  RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD was an obvious inspiration – talking zombies appear from time to time (many in scenes derived directly from the Dan O’Bannon film) and the contagion is spread in the same manner (through the cremation of an infected body).  Romero’s DAY OF THE DEAD seems to have been as well, inspiring a long running scientists-versus-Army-men subplot.  Even the hard-rocking Lamberto Bava flick DEMONS is pillaged, leading to a number of ZOMBI 3′s titular monsters sporting claws!

The end result is a tremendously weird undead opus with absolutely no internal logic and an uncanny ability to entertain for all the wrong reasons.  The script by Fragasso and co-writer Rosella Drudi, apparently still being revised when Fulci flew the coup, is an awful mess that undoubtedly sounds even worse dubbed as ZOMBI 3 was dubbed.  The lengthy dialogues between the head scientist of the “Death 1″ project and the General in charge of cleaning up the zombie mess are particularly poor in conception, a problem made ludicrously worse through the performances of Robert Morius (forever accenting with his hands) and Mike Monty in those respective roles.

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003 004

The focus throughout tends to be more on action than horror, in spite of a bevy of Franco Di Girolamo [NIGHTMARE CITY, THE NEW YORK RIPPER] gore effects, and ZOMBI 3 sports both an exploding gas station and plenty of macho-men with machine guns.  Even the zombie scenes are more kinetic than the usual, with the contaminated / undead bursting out of corners with machetes or hopping off of rooftops and the like.  Occasionally the action-oriented approach works well, as when a soldier is attacked by zombies (including his newly legless female companion!) by a bubbling pool.

The rest tends towards pure hokum.  Zombies leap off pillars and lie in wait behind cabinet doors, in the rafters, or even ‘neath abandoned pregnant women (!).  There are a couple of attempts at seriousness, as in a few stylized slow-motion shots of the ongoing death squad massacre (coupled with a “trust the government” speech from blind DJ Blue Heart), but they are few and far between.  Fulci takes to filling the screen with fog and shooting with considerable diffusion, perhaps to save his audience from the idiocy he knew was playing out before the camera.  It’s a pity he never thought to direct it with the same comic sensibility he brought to so many of his pre-horror films (THE EROTICIST, et al.).

ZOMBI 3 is undeniably awful, but its terribleness may just be its saving grace.  It certainly adds to the overall recommendability.  If you’re interested in seeing doofuses in hazmat suits fist-fighting two army men when they all have perfectly good machine guns available (at least one of which is wielded as a club!) or watching pesky clawed zombies push unsuspecting girls out of windows (or even leaping out of them themselves!) then ZOMBI 3 is clearly a film for you.  It has all of that and more, and that aforementioned flying zombie head to boot.

This one suffered handily at the hands of censors but was restored to its full 95 minute running time for the 2002 Media Blasters / Shriek Show DVD release.  The composite job looks pretty dreadful all around, with numerous switches between film-sourced and tape-sourced elements, but it’s the best I’ve seen the film look to date.  It’s recommended to fans and the curious alike and can be had quite cheaply as part of The Zombie Pack, a three disc combo package that also includes two proto-sequels (Claudio Fragasso’s entertaining AFTER DEATH and Joe D’Amato’s KILLING BIRDS, the latter of which was produced a year before this film), or much more expensively as an individual release.

Inarguably idiotic and a complete failure in the fields of both horror and action, ZOMBI 3 nevertheless has the potential to be one of the most entertaining of Italy’s many many flesh eating fiascoes.  It’s all about expectations.  Personally, I loved it.  Recommended.

005


The Box

November 12th, 2009 | article by | No Comments »
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postercompany: Warner Bros. Pictures
year: 2009
runtime: 116′
country: United States
director: Richard Kelly
cast: Cameron Diaz, James Marsden,
Frank Langella, James Rebhorn,
Holmes Osborne, Sam Oz Stone
out in wide release

Warning: Spoilers may lie ahead

I don’t believe I have ever seen a movie that confused me so much. I will not even attempt a complete plot summary as its disparate elements are so far flung and baffling that it would be a difficult task to condense them all into a review. The Box disappointed me because I was optimistic about seeing this movie after reading reviews and because the premise seemed to have a lot of potential. A couple is offered a choice: push a button and win one million dollars however pressing the button will cause the death of an unknown person. Based upon the story Button, Button by Richard Matheson, the premise conjured questions of morality: upon what do we base our morality, and are we capable of ever truly being moral entities?

The beginning of the movie seemed to deliver on that promise. A couple, Norma (Cameron Diaz) and Arthur (James Marsden), receives a box early one morning which contains a button mounted on a wooden base and covered in a glass dome. Later that day a man calling himself Mr. Steward arrives at their house and explains the conditions of the million dollar prize. They may not speak to anyone about the offer that has been made to them or they forfeit the million dollars, and Steward is not able to answer any questions about those who employ him. They also have only 24 hours to make their decision. This offer is immediately tempting because of the financial difficulties faced by the couple. After almost a full day of discussion, Norma pushes the button 15 minutes before Mr. Steward arrives to reclaim and reprogram the box.

From this point on the film diverges wildly from the Matheson story. What had begun as an interesting examination of the moral choices that human beings make, becomes a paranoid rambling that centers around a partnership between the United States government and Mr. Steward with Norma and Arthur at its center trying to desperately save themselves. It appears that for some reason Norma and Arthur should be somehow punished for choosing to push the button. The parallels between this couple and Adam and Eve are quite apparent throughout the film, and are highlighted by the existence of two other couples that are briefly present in the film. In all three cases the wife pushes the button while her husband sits next to her silently. One could be forgiven for assuming there is a misogynist bent to the film.

As for Mr. Steward, it appears that he was actually killed during a lightning storm while testing equipment for NASA. This has happened sometime before the events shown in the film take place. Sometime after being sent to the morgue, he is miraculously resuscitated and it is implied his body is being inhabited by another being. This new being, which has adopted Steward’s name and form, is conducting an experiment on behalf of a group which he refers to as “those whom control the lightning.” If a magical number of people choose to press the button and receive the million dollars these mysterious lightning people will decide to speed up the extinction of the human race. The assumption is that only moral species are allowed to survive, though no one seems to be offering this choice to lions, or dolphins, or spiders or any other animal that kills others of its species for personal gain (food, mates, space, etc). It is also never quite made clear what moral code this decision will be based on which in turn makes the movie somewhat hard to interpret.

With the powers granted to him by the lightning people, Steward mobilizes a large group of people he refers to as his employees. They distinguish themselves from the rest of the cast by doing things in unison, having nose bleeds, and walking around with their mouths open as if to catch insects. Their purpose in the film is never really made clear. Are they spying on the couple? Are they doing Steward’s laundry? We are never really told. A few of them do useful things like drive Steward’s car, deliver notes, or kidnap children but they are a fraction of the number that are actually “employed.” They seem to exist solely to create an atmosphere of paranoia a la INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS.

The ending of the film is the most bewildering part. Norma and Arthur’s son Walter is kidnapped, and through some ambiguous, though reversible, process he is rendered both deaf and blind. He is then deposited in the couple’s bathroom while his parent’s face their final choice. Because Norma pushed the button, they can either keep the million dollars and live with a blind and deaf son, or Arthur can shoot Norma in the heart at point blank range and their son can regain his sight and hearing. Either way Walter, who has had absolutely no active role in any of the decisions that his parents have made, suffers. Either he loses both of his parents or he exists in a world of silent darkness forever. Arthur and Norma decide that their son’s welfare is the most important thing, and Norma insists that Arthur shoot her. At the moment that Arthur pulls the trigger, another couple is deciding to push the reprogrammed button given to them by Mr. Steward. I can only assume that her decision to sacrifice herself is a way to atone for her more selfish decision to accept the million dollars.

At this point, then, it becomes unclear who actually is responsible for Norma’s death. Is it her husband or is it the new couple who pressed the button? This has huge implications for the rest of the film. One presumes that because Norma pressed the button and she is guilty of someone’s death that for justice to be served she has to die. However, as we learn during the film, the woman that was killed when Norma pushed her button was shot at point blank range by her husband. Who, then, is responsible for the woman’s death – Norma, or the husband who ultimately pulled the trigger? After seeing the ending, the rest of the movie seemed to fall apart. None of the obscure Sartre references help much either.

Lastly, for powerful supernatural beings, these lightning folks don’t seem to know much about experimental protocol. They could have learned plenty about human morality by simply observing us, and it would have saved them a lot of effort and money in making little wooden boxes to send out to unsuspecting people and in kidnapping and brainwashing dozens of people. In addition the lightning beings will only choose couples who are married and have one child. So as a result of the actions of this specific group of people, the rest of us will be either doomed or saved.

Aside from the gaping plot holes the movie makes the mistake of being much too broad. It attempts to integrate too many plot devices and twists and eventually loses the elegance and simplicity of the original premise. This has the additional consequence of making the message of the film rather obscure. Is the ultimate lesson that it’s bad to kill people even if you don’t know them? There are children’s books that make the point more succinctly. Instead of interrogating the motives for making a selfish versus selfless choice, it explodes into conspiratorial silliness. If the premise interests you do yourself a favor and simply read the Matheson story. As is the case with I Am Legend, the textual version of the story offers so much more than the version adapted for the screen.


The Man Without a Body

November 11th, 2009 | article by | No Comments »
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postercompany: Filmplays Ltd.
year: 1957
runtime: 75′
countries: United States
and United Kingdom
directors: W. Lee Wilder
and Charles Saunders
cast: Robert Hutton, George Coulouris,
Julia Amall, Nadja Regin, Peter Copley,
Sheldon Lawrence, Michael Golden
not on DVD in the USA

Plot: The heirless head of a self-made financial empire discovers that he is dying of a brain tumor.  Hoping to ensure the continued expansion of his power and wealth, he gets in touch with a group of experimental scientists so that they might resurrect the disembodied head of the long-dead prognosticator Nostradamus, whose brain he intends to implant into his own healthy body . . .

What a delightfully preposterous example of transplant horror this is!  You may find yourself asking how anyone, egomaniacal millionaire or not, could possibly think that digging up the 400-year-old remains of Nostradamus, removing the head, and bringing it back to life so that they can use the brain as their own is a viable alternative to simply asking one of their contemporaries to look after the family business when the inevitable occurs, but that would be missing the point.  THE MAN WITHOUT A BODY isn’t about an aging and ailing patriarch handing off his legacy to the next generation, it’s about a man without a body.  Common sense is optional, but disembodied heads are not.

It’s a pity that screenwriter William Grote never lent his name to anything else, as his work here makes for wonderfully dumb entertainment.  Kudos are in order for his bypassing of typical mad-scientist stereotypes, as Dr. Merritt (Robert Hutton), the man tasked by rich madman Brussard (George Coulouris) with revivifying the head of Nostradamus, is actually praised for his work throughout by colleagues and the authorities alike.  When Merritt makes the snap decision to graft Nostradamus’ dying head onto the body of his brain-dead colleague a fellow physician supports it as a fine example of his following the tenants of the Hippocratic oath – nevermind the ethics of having resurrected long-dead human remains to begin with.

Grote’s script unflinchingly supports the veracity of Nostradamus’ powers of prognostication, of course (fine by this skeptic, who can recall a particulalry crazy disaster film that wouldn’t exist without the same).  When he is first awakened Dr. Merritt and his colleagues waste no time in flattering him with reassurance that his prophecies have come true, which Nostradamus is, naturally, already aware of.  “I have always lived in the future,” he tells Merritt, as dim-witted assistant Dr. Waldenhouse (Sheldon Lawrence) rattles on about airplanes, submarines, and light bulbs.

Brussard, on the other hand, seems to have never heard of the fellow – not until he takes a fateful trip to a London wax museum, that is.  A tour guide’s rehearsed spiel about Nostradamus’ presumed awesomeness is all it takes to convince him that travelling to France, an alcoholic quack physician and two lackeys in tow, to desecrate the 16th century poet’s crypt is the right thing to do.  He never bothers to think that Nostradamus might not be down for his scheme for power-grabbing from beyond the grave, and is blindsided when the prophet leads him to destroy his own empire through faulty stock predictions.  “For the first time in my life I trusted someone else – you ruined me!”

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All of this is good schlocky fun, but Grote’s last minute diversion into monster-on-the-loose territory is perhaps the biggest reason for hunting THE MAN WITHOUT A BODY down.  Brussard, crazed beyond all reason and brandishing a pistol, confronts Dr. Merritt’s cobbling together of his dead lab assistant and Nostradamus’ head, leaving the confused creature wandering the London streets.  The sight of Dr. Merritt’s Frankenstein creation, looking a bit like a demented mascot for dental health, ought be enough to send even the most jaded of b-movie aficionados into fits of laughter.  The poor thing doesn’t even do anyone any harm, opting to end its life by hanging itself in the roping of a school bell tower.  Audiences are left with a final perversely hilarious image of Nostradamus’ head, stuffed in a gigantic cast, dangling from a makeshift noose while the body, apparently attached with little but masking tape, crashes to the floor below.

Augmenting Grote’s ludicrous screenplay are a few wonderfully gruesome creations by production designer Harry White [CURSE OF THE FLY].  One wall of Dr. Merritt’s lab is dominated by a rack of tanks full of living human organs, while another corner shows a disembodied but very alive human eye stuck amidst a spiderweb of wires and apparatus.  Nostradamus’ head, too often a cheap mock-up sitting on a lab table with a few tubes sticking out of its neck, is far less interesting in comparison.  Cinematography by Brendan J. Stafford makes for some interesting compositions but can’t really cover for the silliness of the direction of W. Lee Wilder [KILLERS FROM SPACE] and Charles Saunders [NUDIST PARADISE].

Performances are mixed but acceptable, and George Coulouris, formerly of Orson Welles’ Mercury Theatre, steals the show as the deranged Karl Brussard.  Robert Hutton does what he does best in making asinine dialogue sound entirely 004reasonable while keeping his hands in his coat pockets for extended periods of time.  Veteran actor Peter Copley is a welcome sight, making the most of a minor role that couldn’t have taken more than a day to shoot, while newcomer Sheldon Lawrence’s cumbersome line delivery is a definite sore spot.

THE MAN WITHOUT A BODY is another in a laundry list of older genre titles distributor Paramount Pictures has yet to give any kind of home video release – a damned shame in my estimation, though the studio’s recent leasing of some of its holdings to Legend Films for DVD release is a promising sign.  Officially available or no, this is a fine piece of obscure camp cinema that should find a welcome audience in fans of others of its ilk (the meaner-spirited THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN’T DIE, for instance).  Highly recommended.


The Flame Barrier

November 7th, 2009 | article by | No Comments »
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001a.k.a. Beyond the Flame Barrier
company: Gramercy Pictures
year: 1958
runtime: 70′
country: United States
director: Paul Landers
cast: Arthur Franz, Kathleen Crowley,
Robert Brown, Vicente Padula
not on home video

Plot: A scientist goes missing while hunting for a downed satellite in the South American jungle.  His wife, with the help of two surveyors, follows the route of the scientist’s party and discovers that a mysterious force is killing animals and people in the area.  They eventually find the satellite, and the deadly space life brought to Earth with it . . .

This is an odd little amalgamation of exploitation genres – a standard skid-row jungle adventure with an unusual science fiction twist.  The first two thirds of the film are dominated by our three main characters either driving around the California countryside (no real attempt is made to make it look particularly foreign) or wandering through cramped sets filled with jungle foliage.  The traditional issues present themselves – the jeep gets stuck in the mud and the party members are menaced by local wildlife (including a very real snake whose head is manipulated by a rather obvious string).

The men are expectantly rugged know-it-alls who take every opportunity to remind the wife who’s hired them of how difficult and dangerous the trip is going to be.  The wife fights back by being the typical genre woman – wearing a dress to traipse through the jungle, recoiling in terror at the site of anything at all living (iguanas, snakes, tarantulas, etc.), and generally bogging down the pace of the expedition with her sexual inferiority.  While she’s not the worst drawn of 50′s genre women, she’s not much of an improvement over those seen in the likes of FROM HELL IT CAME.

Minimal interest is injected into the human drama thanks to the inclusion of a ramshackle love subplot.  Questions of the wife’s motivations for starting the trip (does she really love her husband or is she just after a hefty inheritance?) go mostly unanswered, though she’s locked in the welcoming arms of Arthur Franz within minutes of discovering her husband is dead.  The love story, if it can be called that, is par for the genre – a weak woman and a bossy man discover they’re meant for each other in the face of some terrible crisis.

It’s the terrible crisis of the picture that really provides the only reason for seeing it.  THE FLAME BARRIER plays on Cold War tensions and the escalating space race, revolving around the failed launch of a satellite (a dead ringer for Sputnik, though larger) and its return to Earth with an ambiguous alien threat in tow.  The menace in this case is of the same enigmatic variety seen in the contemporary Quatermass films and Hammer’s knock-off, X: THE UNKNOWN, though budgetary necessity restrains its threatening blobiness to a cave for the duration.

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The build-up to the revelation of the would-be invader is memorable.  Strange sounds echo through the jungle as the party discovers disconcerting clues: a native chieftan left to die as sacrifice to the gods and skeletons that appear burned.  Eventually live people present with symptoms.  A native shows up covered in strange burns only to erupt in flame moments later, his body reduced to a smoldering skeleton in seconds.  The film is at its most effective while its threat is unknown, and manages some memorable if not terribly shocking images.

The revelation of the alien organism, a static blob of organic matter surrounding the satellite and with the dead scientist stuck inside of it, is a real letdown in comparison.  The nature of its danger to humanity is poorly conceived at best.  Early victims show what appear to be acid burns that cause death quickly, but not immediately, while the deadly electrical field said to surround the blob is shown to disintigrate those who come into contact with it more or less isntantaneously.  Any unease resulting from the revelation that the electrical field is growing at an exponential rate is quickly laid to rest, as our two surveyor heroes discover the solution to the problem a scant few minutes later.  Indeed, the only real danger posed by the blob seems to be to those stupid enough to wander into the cave and touch it, like a test chimpanzee that somehow survived the crash landing of the satellite and, in a asinine display of self sacrifice, one of the surveyors.

THE FLAME BARRIER is typical of the underfunded genre programmers that filled double bills towards the end of the ’50s.  The script, by Pat Fielder [THE MONSTER THAT CHALLENGED THE WORLD] and George Worthing Yates, recalls the latter’s work on the Bert I. Gordon vehicle WAR OF THE COLOSSAL BEAST from the same year but is nowhere near as accomplished.  The science fiction aspect never really gels with the paltry jungle adventure that dominates the first two acts, and the drama is too inept to be of any real interest.  Technically adept but visually bland direction from Paul Landers [THE VAMPIRE] does nothing to elevate it beyond merely passable.

This is one of a mountain of cheapie titles distributed by United Artists currently cluttering up the vast MGM library.  While many of these have made it to DVD via the seemingly abandoned Midnight Movies line, THE FLAME BARRIER posterhas had no such luck and doesn’t seem to have ever had an official home video release.  It seems doubtful, especially with classics like THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT patiently waiting in the wings, that this little clunker will be appearing on store shelves anytime soon.

While I generally lament the lack of a proper video release for just about anything, genre fanatics can rest assured that they’re not really missing much here.  THE FLAME BARRIER is another in a long line of budget-minded programmers that never takes off and leaves prescious little to recommend.  For completists only.


Attack of the Giant Leeches

October 29th, 2009 | article by | No Comments »
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postera.k.a. The Giant Leeches
company: American International Pictures
year: 1959
runtime: 62′
country: United States
director: Bernard L. Kowalski
cast: Ken Clark, Yvette Vickers,
Jan Shepard, Michael Emmet,
Tyler McVey, Bruno VeSota
Order this film from Amazon.com

The rural folk living near a Florida game preserve are attacked by leeches that have grown to enormous size due to atomic contamination from nearby Cape Canaveral.  It’s up to a local doctor, the town sheriff, and a wildlife preservation specialist to stop them.

This is another of the poverty-row creature features produced by Roger Corman, in this case with an assist from brother Gene Corman, in the back end of the fifties before his popular cycle of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations began.  Released theatrically through American International Pictures in October of 1959, ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES is barely a feature at all with a running time of just a few ticks over an hour but undoubtedly drew in its target audience of exploitation-minded teens and pre-teens thanks to a wonderfully lurid poster showing the titular monsters hovering just above their mess of scantily clad and undoubtedly helpless female victims.

Like so many of the Corman productions of the time, ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES definitely earns some weirdness points for the nature of its key attraction.  The race of intelligent and radioactive people-sized leeches is certainly inspired in conception, if not so much in execution.  The floppy suits used to bring the beasts to life are reasonable enough in design in my estimation (just how does one judge the appearance of a giant leech suit anyway?) but look little more than clunky and awkward swimming about the Florida swamps.

Still, there are a few effectively gruesome vintage effects setups to be had along the way.  The most memorable, by far, is the sight of the leeches rising from the much of their cavern hideaway to feast on their collection of living victims, 002rendered helpless from loss of blood.  Director Bernard L. Kowalski [NIGHT OF THE BLOOD BEAST] manages to generate some creepy atmosphere here, something that’s in short supply for the rest of the picture.

Its novel menace and a few scare scenes aside, ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES is a pretty dull affair hampered greatly by a paltry screenplay by Leo Gordon [THE WASP WOMAN].  A sleazy white-trash love triangle between sexy Yvette Vickers and her two beaus – a fat husband and a local miscreant – is good for laughs, but the rest is strictly by the books.  There’s some forced irony to our wildlife preservation specialist hero’s realization that not all animals are worth saving.  He ultimately dynamites the leeches’ swamp home after an hour of rallying against it on ethical grounds.

Performances are a mixed bag.  Lead Ken Clark makes for a thoroughly uninteresting hero while veteran bit actor Gene Roth [ZOMBIES OF MORA TAU] is wasted in his paltry role as the town sheriff.  Roth seems to have made quite a living 001in small roles, with over 250 to his credit.  The biggest draw among the cast is definitely Yvette Vickers [ATTACK OF THE 50 FOOT WOMAN], who has little to do but show off her physical charms.

Other aspects of the production are about what one might expect.  Decent if uninspired photography is handled by John M. Nickolaus Jr., who would go on to work on season one of the original THE OUTER LIMITS, alternating episodes with the up-and-coming Conrad Hall.  Direction by relative newcomer Kowalski is competent without being flashy, and undoubtedly earned him a few bucks on the way to a successful career in television.  Alexander Laszlo’s fine score is even better the second time around, having been composed originally for the earlier Corman cheapie NIGHT OF THE BLOOD BEAST.

Rights to ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES have apparently fallen by the wayside, leaving it quite the easy film to find.  I’d be surrpised if half of you reading this article didn’t already own a copy or two of it due to its prevelence in those 003ultra-cheap “public domain” DVD sets put out by companies like Mill Creek and the like.  The copy I reviewed from is part of the Monsters 20 Movie Pack released by that company in 2005, and is smashed onto a dual layered disc with three other features.  There are innumerable options out there with regards to owning this one, so those looking to buy are encouraged to shop around.

If you’ve seen a Corman produced monster flick from this time period then you should already know what to expect.  This one is worth at least one trod through if only for a few moments of creepiness and Yvette Vickers’ legs.  Those for whom these simple pleasures are not enough should probably stear clear.


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