Two years ago, a mortician sews shut the eyes of a young dead college girl, because they won't close otherwise. Once he pushes her back into the rack, her eyes open splitting the stitches. It's a really cool image to start a movie. She's Lee Kyung-ah and there's plenty of mystery about her death, even though she apparently committed suicide by jumping off a building. The return of Sun-ae from a few years in the States provides the spark for seven friends to revisit the incident, generally through memories of the past or hallucinations of Kyung-ah following them around.
The first half of the film is really confusing. It jumps around in time a lot and it's hard to work out where things fit into the real timeline of events. About halfway through it becomes clearer and we can start to understand just how all these friends fit together and why. Once we have that much, the whole vengeful ghost thing begins to make far more sense even though there are plenty of alternative possibilities thrown in there to keep us guessing. The ending is also very cool.
I don't know any of the cast, being relatively new to South Korean horror, or K-Horror in response to the Japanese J-Horror. I'm learning though, mostly courtesy of the Sundance Channel, about directors like Chan-wook Park, Ki-hyeong Park and here Byeong-ki ahn who has four films to his credit, this being the first. The rest are Phone, Ouija Board and APT. I have a bunch more on the DVR ready to go, including two thirds of Chan-wook Park's Vengeance trilogy.
I really enjoyed the way this film looks, the impactful scenes being artfully done well beyond the grue. Whether this is the direction or the cinematography of Seok-hyeon Lee, I honestly don't know, but it looks very good indeed. It's partly the angles, partly the camera movements, partly the way certain scenes are set up. The underwater scene in the swimming pool is startling. My problem is in the editing, as it really invites an immediate reviewing just to help make sense of everything. It doesn't help that the character who shoots all the crucial back stories on video manages to somehow get shots from every awesome angle, possible and impossible.
Monday, 10 December 2007
They Call It Sin (1932) Thornton Freeland
David Manners is a businessman again, though a real salesman this time called Jimmy Decker not just a secretary. He's engaged again too, this time to Enid Hollister, played by Helen Vinson, who is the boss's daughter. He finds himself in Merton, KS, on business, where almost everything is closed on Sunday so everyone can go to church and that's where he discovers the organist Marion Cullen, played rather seductively by Loretta Young, even though she doesn't look as good as most of the rest of the female cast, including Una Merkel, Helen Vinson or even uncredited soda jerk Marion Byron.
Anyway he completely ignores his engagement and romances young Marion, even stopping back in Merton on his return back from the rest of his business trip to California. Luckily for her and unluckily for him, the day he leaves back for New York, she discovers that her parents aren't her parents and there's nothing left to tie her to Merton. So off she runs to New York and her Jimmy, where he bizarrely hooks her up with his fiancee to find somewhere to exploit her musical talent.
This would have quickly become a very strange love triangle, or even a four way with the addition of George Brent as a doctor friend of Jimmy's who falls for Marion too, but they disappear from the plot for a while so that Marion can meet up with Una Merkel as a dancer called Dixie Dare, and together land work with a womanising theatrical producer. Once everything's moving in that direction, back come Jimmy and the doctor and the whole soap opera starts again.
The film is well acted by all involved, though it shows that it's really early in Helen Vinson's career. Merkel is great fun, Manners sincere and decent even when cheating, Brent decent in his own quiet way and Louis Calhern suitably villainous as Humphries the theatrical producer. I've never really become much of a fan of Loretta Young but she's fine here too, though its hardly believable that what seems like half of New York could fall for her with so much other talent around. The biggest fault of the film though is the script, which tries its best to hold together but veers a little too much into unreality on more than one occasion, not least the ending.
Anyway he completely ignores his engagement and romances young Marion, even stopping back in Merton on his return back from the rest of his business trip to California. Luckily for her and unluckily for him, the day he leaves back for New York, she discovers that her parents aren't her parents and there's nothing left to tie her to Merton. So off she runs to New York and her Jimmy, where he bizarrely hooks her up with his fiancee to find somewhere to exploit her musical talent.
This would have quickly become a very strange love triangle, or even a four way with the addition of George Brent as a doctor friend of Jimmy's who falls for Marion too, but they disappear from the plot for a while so that Marion can meet up with Una Merkel as a dancer called Dixie Dare, and together land work with a womanising theatrical producer. Once everything's moving in that direction, back come Jimmy and the doctor and the whole soap opera starts again.
The film is well acted by all involved, though it shows that it's really early in Helen Vinson's career. Merkel is great fun, Manners sincere and decent even when cheating, Brent decent in his own quiet way and Louis Calhern suitably villainous as Humphries the theatrical producer. I've never really become much of a fan of Loretta Young but she's fine here too, though its hardly believable that what seems like half of New York could fall for her with so much other talent around. The biggest fault of the film though is the script, which tries its best to hold together but veers a little too much into unreality on more than one occasion, not least the ending.
Man Wanted (1932) William Dieterle
Here's Kay Francis again, this time with backup from actors of the calibre of David Manners, Una Merkel and Andy Devine. You can tell it's a precode because Kay Francis is a managing editor and David Manners is her male secretary, while she's married to a loafer of a husband who's cheating on her with Claire Dodd and he's engaged to Una Merkel. We're at The 400 Magazine, which Lois Ames runs and to which the French & Sprague sporting goods company wants to sell a rowing machine. Manners and Devine are salesmen and their company thinks that a sale to Mrs Ames would create wonderful publicity.
So off Manners runs to demonstrate the machine at nine at night, and ends up landing a job as her secretary along with the sale. Naturally they end up falling for each other as they're a perfect match, but all the clunkiness of Transgression has vanished to be replaced by some clever sophistication, making their love affair a continually imminent thing. As hard working professionals, both the leads have their work to use as a barrier between their personal lives and they have the talent to make that believable.
Kay Francis was always an actress of class and she shone when she was given material of substance to work with, and I've become more and more impressed by David Manners with every film of his that I see. When I first saw him, he just seemed like a sap who got to share the screen with greater talents, but each subsequent film I catch shows that there are depths in his performances that merely require a little attention to really see. I really need to revisit his most famous role in Dracula, because films like The Last Flight and especially The Miracle Woman have made me a solid fan of his.
It's not just their performances that make this film work, as the script is as cleverly put together as Transgression's wasn't and the direction from William Dieterle is as solid as you'd expect. Mostly though it's the two leads, who shine both in their own regards and as a screen couple. I'm surprised that given their chemistry here, they never made another film together.
So off Manners runs to demonstrate the machine at nine at night, and ends up landing a job as her secretary along with the sale. Naturally they end up falling for each other as they're a perfect match, but all the clunkiness of Transgression has vanished to be replaced by some clever sophistication, making their love affair a continually imminent thing. As hard working professionals, both the leads have their work to use as a barrier between their personal lives and they have the talent to make that believable.
Kay Francis was always an actress of class and she shone when she was given material of substance to work with, and I've become more and more impressed by David Manners with every film of his that I see. When I first saw him, he just seemed like a sap who got to share the screen with greater talents, but each subsequent film I catch shows that there are depths in his performances that merely require a little attention to really see. I really need to revisit his most famous role in Dracula, because films like The Last Flight and especially The Miracle Woman have made me a solid fan of his.
It's not just their performances that make this film work, as the script is as cleverly put together as Transgression's wasn't and the direction from William Dieterle is as solid as you'd expect. Mostly though it's the two leads, who shine both in their own regards and as a screen couple. I'm surprised that given their chemistry here, they never made another film together.
Transgression (1931) Herbert Brenon
Up until now the only Herbert Brenon picture I've seen was the Lon Chaney silent, Laugh, Clown, Laugh, but I've just been reading about him and his 1916 production A Daughter of the Gods in Frank Thompson's book Lost Films: Important Movies That Disappeared. It sounds fascinating, an early million dollar three hour spectacular with themes and artistic tricks apparently well before its time. However, as the title of the book suggests, it's a lost film.
Transgression isn't. It's a precode with Wavishing Kay Fwancis, Ricardo Cortez and someone called Paul Cavanagh who I don't know even though I seem to have seen him in a whole slew of films. Francis is Elsie Maury, whose husband Robert (Cavanagh) is about to leave on a year long business trip to the wilds of India. She wants to go with him but apparently it's not possible because wives are forbidden there or some such, so she's forced to head over to Paris for the duration.
The telling line comes early on as Elsie tries one last time to go to Bombay with her husband. He tells her, 'after two or three weeks in Paris you'll forget you ever had a husband at all'. Most of the plot has to do with her doing exactly that. It begins with wild spending of money but soon progresses to being courted by Latin lover Don Arturo de Borgus, played by Ricardo Cortez. She apparently stays the model wife for a year but just as her husband is due to return, her French friends help persuade her to visit Don Arturo at his Spanish home, El Mirador.
There are a few major problems with this film, though Kay Francis isn't one of them. She's as great as Ricardo Cortez isn't, as he's far from believable as the Latin lothario. His name works fine, but even that isn't real, given that he was born Jacob Krantz in Austria. What really spoils it is his American accent, as he was believable in the silents opposite people like Greta Garbo, but not in the sound era. The story is clunky and predictable and suffers from the fact that Elsie's year in Paris is completely glossed over, leaving us with no way to really believe her slide into seduction.
Transgression isn't. It's a precode with Wavishing Kay Fwancis, Ricardo Cortez and someone called Paul Cavanagh who I don't know even though I seem to have seen him in a whole slew of films. Francis is Elsie Maury, whose husband Robert (Cavanagh) is about to leave on a year long business trip to the wilds of India. She wants to go with him but apparently it's not possible because wives are forbidden there or some such, so she's forced to head over to Paris for the duration.
The telling line comes early on as Elsie tries one last time to go to Bombay with her husband. He tells her, 'after two or three weeks in Paris you'll forget you ever had a husband at all'. Most of the plot has to do with her doing exactly that. It begins with wild spending of money but soon progresses to being courted by Latin lover Don Arturo de Borgus, played by Ricardo Cortez. She apparently stays the model wife for a year but just as her husband is due to return, her French friends help persuade her to visit Don Arturo at his Spanish home, El Mirador.
There are a few major problems with this film, though Kay Francis isn't one of them. She's as great as Ricardo Cortez isn't, as he's far from believable as the Latin lothario. His name works fine, but even that isn't real, given that he was born Jacob Krantz in Austria. What really spoils it is his American accent, as he was believable in the silents opposite people like Greta Garbo, but not in the sound era. The story is clunky and predictable and suffers from the fact that Elsie's year in Paris is completely glossed over, leaving us with no way to really believe her slide into seduction.
Sunday, 9 December 2007
The Falcon in Danger (1943) William Clemens
The Washington plane crash lands on arrival but nobody was on board. Stanley Harris Palmer, noted industrialist was on that plane at some point but literally vanished in thin air. The other two people missing were his assistant and the pilot, the plane landing roughly by automatic controls. The police are baffled and so go talk with Tom Lawrence, the Falcon. Naturally so does the industrialist's daughter who has a ransom note, and the assistant's niece who has another one.
The mystery deepens when Palmer turns up back at home, even though the ransom had been paid in cut up pieces of newspaper, but Fairchild is still missing and other things have already come to light. The Falcon investigates, for both young ladies, and has to do so in the company of a third, Bonnie Caldwell, who is apparently a loud mouthed young lady from Texas who feels it her duty to marry him because he saved her father on another case.
She's played by Amelita Ward who is great fun even though she really ought to be incredibly annoying, which makes her a good fit with her future husband, Leo Gorcey, Muggs from the East Side Kids. She only made twenty films over seven years, but they included one East Side Kids movie and two Falcons (as different parts each time). Her last film was in 1949, the year she married Gorcey. As much fun as she is here, she's forgettable, as sh disappears halfway through the film and it took till the end for me to notice.
Incidentally, the multiple characters concept was hardly rare. Jean Brooks, who plays Iris Fairchild, appeared in no less than six of the Falcon films, as a different character each time round. Elaine Shepard, who plays Nancy Palmer, only appeared in this one but then she was hardly a prolific actress. The rest of the cast are predictable: Tom Conway returns as the Falcon in the second of nine solo outings. Cliff Clark and Ed Gargan return as the cops, Inspector Donovan and the half witted Detective Bates. The story isn't, being a nudge up on the usual entry in the series.
The mystery deepens when Palmer turns up back at home, even though the ransom had been paid in cut up pieces of newspaper, but Fairchild is still missing and other things have already come to light. The Falcon investigates, for both young ladies, and has to do so in the company of a third, Bonnie Caldwell, who is apparently a loud mouthed young lady from Texas who feels it her duty to marry him because he saved her father on another case.
She's played by Amelita Ward who is great fun even though she really ought to be incredibly annoying, which makes her a good fit with her future husband, Leo Gorcey, Muggs from the East Side Kids. She only made twenty films over seven years, but they included one East Side Kids movie and two Falcons (as different parts each time). Her last film was in 1949, the year she married Gorcey. As much fun as she is here, she's forgettable, as sh disappears halfway through the film and it took till the end for me to notice.
Incidentally, the multiple characters concept was hardly rare. Jean Brooks, who plays Iris Fairchild, appeared in no less than six of the Falcon films, as a different character each time round. Elaine Shepard, who plays Nancy Palmer, only appeared in this one but then she was hardly a prolific actress. The rest of the cast are predictable: Tom Conway returns as the Falcon in the second of nine solo outings. Cliff Clark and Ed Gargan return as the cops, Inspector Donovan and the half witted Detective Bates. The story isn't, being a nudge up on the usual entry in the series.
Four Mothers (1941) William Keighley
I'm not usually a big fan of soap opera type women's pictures, but I found 1938's Four Daughters thoroughly enjoyable. Maybe it was the musical background, maybe the joyous work of Claude Rains, maybe the fact that three of the four daughters were played by the Lane sisters who had possibly the most charming and inviting smiles in Hollywood. Perhaps it was the notable introduction of John Garfield in his debut picture. If so, he's the only piece of the picture not to make it through the first sequel, Four Wives, to the final part of the trilogy in 1941.
Claude Rains returns, along with the four daughters/wives/mothers (Priscilla Lane, Rosemary Lane, Lola Lane, Gale Page) and supporting actors Jeffrey Lynn, Eddie Albert, May Robson, Frank McHugh, Dick Foran, Vera Lewis, you name it. That's a big cast to fill less than an hour and a half, but director William Keighley and scriptwriter Stephen Morehouse Avery do their best to give them all screen time, yet leave some for the babies. Naturally, as the title would imply, there are now four of them, one to each of the mothers.
The trigger for plot here is the Ocean Zephyrs property development in Florida, that Ben Crowley (daughter Thea's husband) has been making a fortune off. Unfortunately a hurricane put paid to the whole thing and all their investments, along with those of half the town of Briarwood, are gone with the wind.
The repercussions go well beyond the obvious, with family patriarch Adam Lemp losing his position at the conservatory and the four husbands band together to make enough money to pay back the Briarwood investors. Meanwhile Adam himself puts his house up for sale to raise the money himself. There are other little side plots to complicate things and give people screen time but they're hardly the focus, and of course everything turns out fine in the end, wrapping up not just this film but also the series.
Claude Rains returns, along with the four daughters/wives/mothers (Priscilla Lane, Rosemary Lane, Lola Lane, Gale Page) and supporting actors Jeffrey Lynn, Eddie Albert, May Robson, Frank McHugh, Dick Foran, Vera Lewis, you name it. That's a big cast to fill less than an hour and a half, but director William Keighley and scriptwriter Stephen Morehouse Avery do their best to give them all screen time, yet leave some for the babies. Naturally, as the title would imply, there are now four of them, one to each of the mothers.
The trigger for plot here is the Ocean Zephyrs property development in Florida, that Ben Crowley (daughter Thea's husband) has been making a fortune off. Unfortunately a hurricane put paid to the whole thing and all their investments, along with those of half the town of Briarwood, are gone with the wind.
The repercussions go well beyond the obvious, with family patriarch Adam Lemp losing his position at the conservatory and the four husbands band together to make enough money to pay back the Briarwood investors. Meanwhile Adam himself puts his house up for sale to raise the money himself. There are other little side plots to complicate things and give people screen time but they're hardly the focus, and of course everything turns out fine in the end, wrapping up not just this film but also the series.
The Smart Set (1928) Jack Conway
There can't be a lot of movies out there that focus on the sport of polo, which is surprising because the largest playing field in all of sports ought to work cinematically. Here, we're watching Mr J Thomas Van Buren of the society Van Burens, who must live up to his family traditions by winning a place on the US national polo team. He is apparently a decent player, but he's an egotistical young squirt who spends most of his time getting drunk as a skunk at the Red Lantern Inn, and his outrageous antics naturally lead him into no end of trouble.
Outrageous is something that William Haines did very well, as he was a much better ham than an actor any day. One of my favourite late silent comedies is his Show People, made the same year as this film, and he proves here that that was hardly a fluke. No wonder he was such a huge box office draw in his day and no wonder Louis B Mayer was so upset with him. Haines was openly gay, something that isn't particularly difficult to work out from his screen appearances. In fact it seems that the scriptwriters deliberately wrote scenes in to play up to the fact, such as an early one here where Tommy wrestles with his butler during a massage.
It's never overt though, as Haines was supposed to be a romantic hero. Tommy meets a young lady named Polly in traffic early on in this film and pursues her no end in some bizarre driving scenes. Naturally she turns out to be the daughter of the man he's replacing in the polo team and the girlfriend of his captain. The captain is the ever dependable Jack Holt, who I've come to respect from his work in early Frank Capra movies and other precodes and he's just as dependable here.
Anyway, Holt is a great straight man (no pun intended) to play opposite Haines. He's decent, respectable and with his granite jaw looks the part too. Opposite him Haines can ham it up as much as he likes and get away with it. Because these films work to formula though, we know that as much of an obnoxious brat Tommy gets to be, he'll get his comeuppance at some point late in the film, see the light, find his redemption, win the girl, and all will be well with the world.
The discovery for me is the actress playing Polly, Alice Day. She started out as a Mack Sennett bathing beauty, but progressed up to leading roles. Her career never took off though, and the last of her 68 films came in 1932. She's great fun here, alternately loving Tommy's attentions and annoyingly rejecting them. Her innocent face on the dancefloor while she's grinding her high heels into Tommy's feet is a picture.
Overall this is great fun, though there's the final polo match is probably too long, there's some unfortunate racial humour towards the end (British as well as black American). Marcus Sjowall's new soundtrack is excellent.
Outrageous is something that William Haines did very well, as he was a much better ham than an actor any day. One of my favourite late silent comedies is his Show People, made the same year as this film, and he proves here that that was hardly a fluke. No wonder he was such a huge box office draw in his day and no wonder Louis B Mayer was so upset with him. Haines was openly gay, something that isn't particularly difficult to work out from his screen appearances. In fact it seems that the scriptwriters deliberately wrote scenes in to play up to the fact, such as an early one here where Tommy wrestles with his butler during a massage.
It's never overt though, as Haines was supposed to be a romantic hero. Tommy meets a young lady named Polly in traffic early on in this film and pursues her no end in some bizarre driving scenes. Naturally she turns out to be the daughter of the man he's replacing in the polo team and the girlfriend of his captain. The captain is the ever dependable Jack Holt, who I've come to respect from his work in early Frank Capra movies and other precodes and he's just as dependable here.
Anyway, Holt is a great straight man (no pun intended) to play opposite Haines. He's decent, respectable and with his granite jaw looks the part too. Opposite him Haines can ham it up as much as he likes and get away with it. Because these films work to formula though, we know that as much of an obnoxious brat Tommy gets to be, he'll get his comeuppance at some point late in the film, see the light, find his redemption, win the girl, and all will be well with the world.
The discovery for me is the actress playing Polly, Alice Day. She started out as a Mack Sennett bathing beauty, but progressed up to leading roles. Her career never took off though, and the last of her 68 films came in 1932. She's great fun here, alternately loving Tommy's attentions and annoyingly rejecting them. Her innocent face on the dancefloor while she's grinding her high heels into Tommy's feet is a picture.
Overall this is great fun, though there's the final polo match is probably too long, there's some unfortunate racial humour towards the end (British as well as black American). Marcus Sjowall's new soundtrack is excellent.
Withnail & I (1987) Bruce Robinson
Somehow I've never seen all of this film. I saw parts of it in student flats here and there back in the eighties and earlier nineties but never all of it and it's really about time. It's high up on the British Film Institute's list of the greatest British films of all time and it's quite possibly one of the most quotable cult films of all time. The cast is impeccable too: Richard E Grant in his outrageous debut appearance; Paul McGann long before he would become Doctor Who, also in his debut; the always memorable Richard Griffiths; Ralph Brown, the roadie in Wayne's World 2 and Michael Elphick, TV's Boon.
We're in Camden Town in 1969, where Withnail and I, who is not named in the film, are perennially unemployed actors attempting to get through life the only way they can, which generally involves copious amounts of alcohol or whatever might approximate it with whatever they get on unemployment cheques. There's really no plot at all, which leaves us paying attention only to the characters themselves, the situations they find themselves in, and the way they're written and acted.
Marwood (the 'I' of the title) is touchy and paranoid and understands or misunderstands everything, Withnail is blissfully free of all connections to reality and flounders whenever confronted with anything remotely down to earth. Both are impeccably depicted by Richard E Grant and Paul McGann, with talent well beyond their experience. Griffiths plays Withnail's Uncle Monty as a rich and pouting homosexual with the hots for 'I', something that Withnail plays up to in order to get access to Monty's cottage for a holiday. Ralph Brown is hilarious in that bizarre monotonal voice of his, waxing philosophical while sounding like he has no brain.
I honestly don't know what to think of this film. It's powerful, for sure, it's highly quotable, it contains some outstanding performances. But is it enjoyable? I couldn't stop watching but I don't think I really enjoyed it. I have a feeling it's like a friend that you learn more about through association over time. The thing is that one man's friend is not another's. It doesn't make him any less a friend, just not necessarily mine.
We're in Camden Town in 1969, where Withnail and I, who is not named in the film, are perennially unemployed actors attempting to get through life the only way they can, which generally involves copious amounts of alcohol or whatever might approximate it with whatever they get on unemployment cheques. There's really no plot at all, which leaves us paying attention only to the characters themselves, the situations they find themselves in, and the way they're written and acted.
Marwood (the 'I' of the title) is touchy and paranoid and understands or misunderstands everything, Withnail is blissfully free of all connections to reality and flounders whenever confronted with anything remotely down to earth. Both are impeccably depicted by Richard E Grant and Paul McGann, with talent well beyond their experience. Griffiths plays Withnail's Uncle Monty as a rich and pouting homosexual with the hots for 'I', something that Withnail plays up to in order to get access to Monty's cottage for a holiday. Ralph Brown is hilarious in that bizarre monotonal voice of his, waxing philosophical while sounding like he has no brain.
I honestly don't know what to think of this film. It's powerful, for sure, it's highly quotable, it contains some outstanding performances. But is it enjoyable? I couldn't stop watching but I don't think I really enjoyed it. I have a feeling it's like a friend that you learn more about through association over time. The thing is that one man's friend is not another's. It doesn't make him any less a friend, just not necessarily mine.
Saturday, 8 December 2007
Gemini (1999) Shinya Tsukamoto
I saw Tetsuo and Tetsuo II: Body Hammer a long time ago, truly bizarre Japanese films that helped spark my interest in modern Asian cinema. Both were directed by Shinya Tsukamoto who has become one of the key names that keep cropping up in my reading up on the genres and browsing around IMDb. While I need to see the Tetsuo films again to refresh the memory of a decade and a half, I saw A Snake of June recently, another of his films as a director, and especially Marebito, in which he was the lead actor and proved that he was freaky an actor as he ever was as a director.
Gemini came out in 1999 and is set a century earlier. Masahiro Motoki is a highly regarded doctor called Daitokuji Yukio who has proven himself as a battlefield surgeon, who lives with his parents and his wife Rin. Rin, as played by an actress called Ryô, is a little strange. She apparently lost her own family in a devastating fire and is suffering from amnesia, though Yukio married her anyway. Now, bizarre things are happening in a gorgeous house that has got more than a little creepy. Yukio's parents die, and then Yukio himself is thrown down a well while what seems to be his twin brother takes over his life.
This film is magnetic and it's impossible not to watch. The sets and costumes are incredible, the soundtrack highly unusual but very cool and the choreography goes well beyond the movements of the main characters which are often boil down to ritual, but even to the way nature moves outside the house. Often people's movements are more like dance than just everyday motion, especially the two leads who are superb. Most striking, especially early on, is the use of colour and light, many rooms or scenes being very restricted in their colour palette but with different colours for different tones or feelings.
Gemini came out in 1999 and is set a century earlier. Masahiro Motoki is a highly regarded doctor called Daitokuji Yukio who has proven himself as a battlefield surgeon, who lives with his parents and his wife Rin. Rin, as played by an actress called Ryô, is a little strange. She apparently lost her own family in a devastating fire and is suffering from amnesia, though Yukio married her anyway. Now, bizarre things are happening in a gorgeous house that has got more than a little creepy. Yukio's parents die, and then Yukio himself is thrown down a well while what seems to be his twin brother takes over his life.
This film is magnetic and it's impossible not to watch. The sets and costumes are incredible, the soundtrack highly unusual but very cool and the choreography goes well beyond the movements of the main characters which are often boil down to ritual, but even to the way nature moves outside the house. Often people's movements are more like dance than just everyday motion, especially the two leads who are superb. Most striking, especially early on, is the use of colour and light, many rooms or scenes being very restricted in their colour palette but with different colours for different tones or feelings.
Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957) Roger Corman
Having grown up addicted to the books of prolific 70s/80s pulp horror novelist Guy N Smith, author of the legendary crabs series, and the films of low budget exploitation maestro Roger Corman, I must have seen this at some point, but I couldn't remember any of it. We're on some obscure Pacific island, centre for scientific study given its strong presence of radioactivity. It's also prone to earthquakes and avalanches and all sorts of other natural chaos, and is now the heart of a mystery to boot.
Some guy called Maclean has vanished from the island, seemingly without trace. He even left his journal halfway through a sentence. Given the title, I'm sure you can't be surprised to find that it was really due to giant mutated crab monsters but these particular giant mutated crab monsters are intelligent and have a talent for telepathy acquired from eating the brains of their victims. Yeah, this wanders further away from any realistic level of sanity than most of its fellow z-grade fifties horror scifi flicks but somehow it has a charm.
Perhaps it's because it has so much packed into its scant 62 minute running time. My better half can enjoy the irony of Russell Johnson's character fixing the radio that has been so neatly destroyed by a giant crab, given that he spent so much of the run of Gilligan's Island nearly a decade later fixing their radio too. I've never seen Gilligan's Island so don't even know who 'The Professor' is, but I can enjoy the irony of one of America's favourite TV shows being so obviously influenced by a Corman film.
I can also enjoy the rest of the nonsense, and there's just so much of it. Beyond the scientific nonsense, which is everywhere and from what seems like every discipline, there are underwater scenes, characters of multiple nationalities and accents, philosophical discussions. There's romance, drama and action. There's even an oil strike and a DJ called Pineapple Joe. You name it, it's in here. None of it is here for long, of course, so pay attention. Blink and it'll be onto something else. Amazing. 1957 is adding up as a stellar year for the truly awful.
Some guy called Maclean has vanished from the island, seemingly without trace. He even left his journal halfway through a sentence. Given the title, I'm sure you can't be surprised to find that it was really due to giant mutated crab monsters but these particular giant mutated crab monsters are intelligent and have a talent for telepathy acquired from eating the brains of their victims. Yeah, this wanders further away from any realistic level of sanity than most of its fellow z-grade fifties horror scifi flicks but somehow it has a charm.
Perhaps it's because it has so much packed into its scant 62 minute running time. My better half can enjoy the irony of Russell Johnson's character fixing the radio that has been so neatly destroyed by a giant crab, given that he spent so much of the run of Gilligan's Island nearly a decade later fixing their radio too. I've never seen Gilligan's Island so don't even know who 'The Professor' is, but I can enjoy the irony of one of America's favourite TV shows being so obviously influenced by a Corman film.
I can also enjoy the rest of the nonsense, and there's just so much of it. Beyond the scientific nonsense, which is everywhere and from what seems like every discipline, there are underwater scenes, characters of multiple nationalities and accents, philosophical discussions. There's romance, drama and action. There's even an oil strike and a DJ called Pineapple Joe. You name it, it's in here. None of it is here for long, of course, so pay attention. Blink and it'll be onto something else. Amazing. 1957 is adding up as a stellar year for the truly awful.
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