This one had every indication that it was going to be truly awful, I mean down at the level of late Bela Lugosi awful. As it turns out, it isn't quite that bad, but it's not far off. It's a hip hop film from 1984 featuring precisely one actor I've heard of: Rae Dawn Chong. When it begins, we find ourselves in the Bronx with a young wannabe DJ, Kenny Kirkland (unimaginatively known as Double K) and his token white boy homie (called Ramon, but he looks like Jim Carrey) putting on a show in a burned out building for the whitest black kids you've ever seen, in clothing that's as out of place in that locale as most of the rest of what we see.
This is no ghetto, though we're set up to believe that it is. Double K may be a class below most of the rest of the characters we meet, but he's not ghetto class. There are a bunch of locks on Double K's door but they don't stay locked, even though mama's already lost one son out there. He has a serious amount of hardware to play with in his room and al these breakdancers have more money invested in their clothes than in their apartments. The trains are clean, tagged admittedly but they're still clean. Best of all, Ramon has a kid, with some Italian girl called Carmen, but it's black! Young Julian is a frizzy haired black baby, but his alleged parents are both as white as I am, and given that Rae Dawn Chong is notably more black than I am that's saying something.
At least Double K's little brother Lee has some serious talent as a breakdancer, and after a dance off at the Roxy he gets approached by Tracy Carlson, who is some sort of rich college student doing performing arts work: composing, choreography or some such. Of course the rich girl falls for the poor boy and vice versa, so we get a romance angle to go along with the ghetto boy making good. In fact we have a few angles, many of which feature Ramon instead of Double K: there's Ramon trying to get over to his dad that he's an graffiti artist not a crook, Ramon and Carmen trying to find a life together, Ramon searching for a white A train like it was Moby Dick, Ramon painting burns while some punk called Spit just tags his name over the top of his art.
There's a lot of flavour here and I did make it through, it holding a lot less embarrassment for me than for my lass who lived through this era and saw much of it for real. She was even more amazed than I was at the lack of authenticity, given that there are some major performing names playing themselves. With people like Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five and Afrika Bambaataa in the film, you'd expect authenticity, but the only black people seem to be the ones on stages performing. The audiences all seem to be white. Even the music is plastic and safe, perhaps a Hollywood requirement but not one that stands up to posterity. This is 1984, so I'm not expecting gangsta culture, but I was expecting something a little more gritty than the Santa Rap.
Sunday, 30 November 2008
Saturday, 29 November 2008
The Harder They Come (1972)
Here's a cult film that I've seen mentioned all over the place but never had a chance to see until now, not courtesy of the Midnite Movie Mamacita at Chandler Cinemas as you might expect, given that this was one of the original midnight movies, but rather courtesy of TCM Underground. It makes me happy to see it but sad that there's no longer a Rob Zombie to introduce it because that would have been truly surreal, given that it's a Jamaican . There's much that's surreal anyway though, given that this is the original version of the film, not the one with subtitles. It's a Jamaican film with all its dialogue in English but the accents are so thick that it often sounds like a foreign language. It's difficult to keep track of what is really going on.
It follows Ivanhoe Martin, a young singer who comes from the country when his grandmother dies, hoping to make it as a singer. He finds it a little harder than he expects, even to get a chance to show anyone what he can do. Before he can do that he has to find work and a place to stay and they aren't forthcoming either. Eventually he finds a girl and gets a single recorded and he thinks he's arrived, but he hasn't counted on the recording industry keeping very much in charge of everything. He finds that the only way to get a hit is to sell the rights to the song, for far less than it's worth, so Ivanhoe ends up working for Pedro dealing ganja instead.
It's hard to describe the film beyond just calling it Jamaican because it doesn't easily fit into other categories. It's a musical film, for sure, drenched in the music of the Caribbean, but that's not the only thing it is. It looks at Jamaican life, pure and simple, showing us the rich and the poor, the devout and the heathen, the good and the bad. We get dreadlocks, streetside domino games and a whole host of berets. We get shanty towns, kids dealing newspapers to drivers by dodging traffic and of course plenty of ganja, given that Ivanhoe ends up in the gangster life. It was great to see people playing bar billiards. I miss that game.
The story doesn't seem entirely consistent, though given that I couldn't understand more than half the dialogue certainly couldn't have helped, and it meanders all over the place. Apparently the two versions have different endings, so I wonder how the subtitled one ended. However much it makes sense, or doesn't make sense, it's certainly an original film. It doesn't feel like anything else I've ever seen: not any other gangster film, music film, rags to riches story, exploitation picture, anything. For a film to remain somewhat unique after 35 years isn't commonplace, so it's hardly surprising it became a cult hit. It deserves that much.
However it's much more than that. It was the first film produced in Jamaica and the trigger by which reggae really hit the States. As much as I could understand what was going on, Jimmy Cliff does a fine job in the lead: beyond being a damn fine singer who sings at least three classics here (The Harder They Come, Many Rivers to Cross and You Can Get It If You Really Want), he provides us with a memorable anti-hero. Midnight movies weren't just cult hits, they were cult hits that people went back to and back to and I can understand why here: the uniqueness, the flavour, the view into a completely different culture. I'd watch it again, but I'd like to see it with subtitles next time.
It follows Ivanhoe Martin, a young singer who comes from the country when his grandmother dies, hoping to make it as a singer. He finds it a little harder than he expects, even to get a chance to show anyone what he can do. Before he can do that he has to find work and a place to stay and they aren't forthcoming either. Eventually he finds a girl and gets a single recorded and he thinks he's arrived, but he hasn't counted on the recording industry keeping very much in charge of everything. He finds that the only way to get a hit is to sell the rights to the song, for far less than it's worth, so Ivanhoe ends up working for Pedro dealing ganja instead.
It's hard to describe the film beyond just calling it Jamaican because it doesn't easily fit into other categories. It's a musical film, for sure, drenched in the music of the Caribbean, but that's not the only thing it is. It looks at Jamaican life, pure and simple, showing us the rich and the poor, the devout and the heathen, the good and the bad. We get dreadlocks, streetside domino games and a whole host of berets. We get shanty towns, kids dealing newspapers to drivers by dodging traffic and of course plenty of ganja, given that Ivanhoe ends up in the gangster life. It was great to see people playing bar billiards. I miss that game.
The story doesn't seem entirely consistent, though given that I couldn't understand more than half the dialogue certainly couldn't have helped, and it meanders all over the place. Apparently the two versions have different endings, so I wonder how the subtitled one ended. However much it makes sense, or doesn't make sense, it's certainly an original film. It doesn't feel like anything else I've ever seen: not any other gangster film, music film, rags to riches story, exploitation picture, anything. For a film to remain somewhat unique after 35 years isn't commonplace, so it's hardly surprising it became a cult hit. It deserves that much.
However it's much more than that. It was the first film produced in Jamaica and the trigger by which reggae really hit the States. As much as I could understand what was going on, Jimmy Cliff does a fine job in the lead: beyond being a damn fine singer who sings at least three classics here (The Harder They Come, Many Rivers to Cross and You Can Get It If You Really Want), he provides us with a memorable anti-hero. Midnight movies weren't just cult hits, they were cult hits that people went back to and back to and I can understand why here: the uniqueness, the flavour, the view into a completely different culture. I'd watch it again, but I'd like to see it with subtitles next time.
Eaten Alive (1977)
You know you've got a sleazy horror movie on your hands when it opens with good ol' boy Robert Englund trying to rape a hooker in a terrible wig. She fights him off because while she may be a hooker she certainly won't do that, but that proves to be a pretty bad call. Miss Hatty, the madam, kicks her out so off she goes to the Starlight Hotel down the road and that's about the worst call of all. Nobody in their right mind would go anywhere like the Starlight Hotel. It's a broken down, seemingly empty place on the edge of the bayou, run by a total nutjob with taped together glasses who mumbles to himself incoherently. And he has a pet croc right outside to feed people he doesn't like. As he doesn't like anyone from Miss Hattie's, sure enough the hooker is soon croc food and just as sure she's but the first of many.
What's most joyously delirious about this film is that this unnamed runaway turned hooker may just be the sanest character in the entire film (with the exception of her sister who arrives later). Judd the Starlight Hotel manager, who is our central character, is crazy as a loon, but he's not the only one to be a little lacking in the sanity department. Usually you'd expect characters like a family of paying customers who turn up to book a room at the hotel to be pretty normal, there to ground the rest of the film and become victims too, of course. Yet Tobe Hooper, who directed this after his runaway success with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre didn't make anything so obvious. There are scenes of complete genius here everything gets awesomely reversed.
Judd the loon does completely normal things like dust his rooms and listen to the radio while the 'normal' family bicker and rage at each other, probably not just because Snoopy, the little girl's dog, thinks he can take on the croc. Roy, played by William Finley, makes weird clutching signals with his hands while raging at his wife for 'gouging out his eyes', which she completely hasn't done, even metaphorically. He notably takes everything an extra step or two too far, which is interesting as his wife Faye is played by Marilyn Burns, whose screaming scene towards the end of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is about as powerfully over the top as anything in horror cinema.
That makes a number of major names involved and they're not the only ones, not even just from a horror fan's perspective: Miss Hatty is played by Carolyn Jones, Morticia Addams herself, in her last but one movie. Kyle Richards is here, in between The Car and Halloween. Janus Blythe would soon move on to The Hills Have Eyes and The Incredible Melting Man. There's also Mel Ferrer as the father of that hooker at the beginning, come to search for his runaway daughter only to unknowingly stay with his other daughter at the Starlight. Coincidentally he was also in the other Eaten Alive, the otherwise unrelated Umberto Lenzi cannibal movie of only three years later. There's Stuart Whitman as the local sheriff.
However the actor who shines brightest is Neville Brand. It isn't just that he's the lead, he really gets into the character of Judd the crazy hotel manager and embues him with a depth that isn't common in sleazy horror films. While waiting for the next gruesome death scene, we can't help but wonder about what makes him tick, because there's far more there than in someone like Leatherface, for instance, which has to be the most obvious comparison, especially given the chase scenes and the way he waves his weapon, albeit a scythe rather than a chainsaw.
Judd is functional enough to run a business, though given that all his customers seem to end up the same way, I'm not sure how. He relishes the death scenes, literally jumping up and down and grinning from ear to ear as the croc or his scythe claim another life, but he has tenderness too. Even when dealing with a woman that he's attacked, viciously slapped around and tied down to the bed, he courteously wipes the sweat from her face more than once. We don't know his intentions, but they don't seem to be sexual. He rages often about Miss Hatty's brothel and apparently used to be a regular, but she kicked him out for good because he never did anything there except talk to the girls. The reasons for his wild idiosyncracies are never explained but it's easy to guess at many sources. I learn towards him being a traumatised soldier suffering from post traumatic stress disorder.
As great as Brand is the way the film feels. The set decorators and the casting crew did an awesome job of making this film look and feel sleazy and dangerous and populated with characters who aid that no end. The opening scene looks and feels like a dubious porn film, then as it progresses into more traditional horror fare, continues with an excellent use of colour. The Starlight Hotel's colours are a bizarre combination of seedy and garish. The unusual soundtrack with its strange noises often merges with the sound effects of the story, screams and cries and such, so that it's sometimes hard to tell the difference between them, especially with the faceless country music (so faceless that I don't even recognise the names of the artists in the end credits) playing continually from Judd's jukebox. All this sound and light and colour, along with dust and fog makes for a palpable atmosphere, which is there regardless of the fact that there's a croc living in the swamp right next to the Starlight not because of it. It didn't hurt that it took me three weeks to watch the movie, for reasons completely unrelated to the film itself. Highly recommended.
What's most joyously delirious about this film is that this unnamed runaway turned hooker may just be the sanest character in the entire film (with the exception of her sister who arrives later). Judd the Starlight Hotel manager, who is our central character, is crazy as a loon, but he's not the only one to be a little lacking in the sanity department. Usually you'd expect characters like a family of paying customers who turn up to book a room at the hotel to be pretty normal, there to ground the rest of the film and become victims too, of course. Yet Tobe Hooper, who directed this after his runaway success with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre didn't make anything so obvious. There are scenes of complete genius here everything gets awesomely reversed.
Judd the loon does completely normal things like dust his rooms and listen to the radio while the 'normal' family bicker and rage at each other, probably not just because Snoopy, the little girl's dog, thinks he can take on the croc. Roy, played by William Finley, makes weird clutching signals with his hands while raging at his wife for 'gouging out his eyes', which she completely hasn't done, even metaphorically. He notably takes everything an extra step or two too far, which is interesting as his wife Faye is played by Marilyn Burns, whose screaming scene towards the end of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is about as powerfully over the top as anything in horror cinema.
That makes a number of major names involved and they're not the only ones, not even just from a horror fan's perspective: Miss Hatty is played by Carolyn Jones, Morticia Addams herself, in her last but one movie. Kyle Richards is here, in between The Car and Halloween. Janus Blythe would soon move on to The Hills Have Eyes and The Incredible Melting Man. There's also Mel Ferrer as the father of that hooker at the beginning, come to search for his runaway daughter only to unknowingly stay with his other daughter at the Starlight. Coincidentally he was also in the other Eaten Alive, the otherwise unrelated Umberto Lenzi cannibal movie of only three years later. There's Stuart Whitman as the local sheriff.
However the actor who shines brightest is Neville Brand. It isn't just that he's the lead, he really gets into the character of Judd the crazy hotel manager and embues him with a depth that isn't common in sleazy horror films. While waiting for the next gruesome death scene, we can't help but wonder about what makes him tick, because there's far more there than in someone like Leatherface, for instance, which has to be the most obvious comparison, especially given the chase scenes and the way he waves his weapon, albeit a scythe rather than a chainsaw.
Judd is functional enough to run a business, though given that all his customers seem to end up the same way, I'm not sure how. He relishes the death scenes, literally jumping up and down and grinning from ear to ear as the croc or his scythe claim another life, but he has tenderness too. Even when dealing with a woman that he's attacked, viciously slapped around and tied down to the bed, he courteously wipes the sweat from her face more than once. We don't know his intentions, but they don't seem to be sexual. He rages often about Miss Hatty's brothel and apparently used to be a regular, but she kicked him out for good because he never did anything there except talk to the girls. The reasons for his wild idiosyncracies are never explained but it's easy to guess at many sources. I learn towards him being a traumatised soldier suffering from post traumatic stress disorder.
As great as Brand is the way the film feels. The set decorators and the casting crew did an awesome job of making this film look and feel sleazy and dangerous and populated with characters who aid that no end. The opening scene looks and feels like a dubious porn film, then as it progresses into more traditional horror fare, continues with an excellent use of colour. The Starlight Hotel's colours are a bizarre combination of seedy and garish. The unusual soundtrack with its strange noises often merges with the sound effects of the story, screams and cries and such, so that it's sometimes hard to tell the difference between them, especially with the faceless country music (so faceless that I don't even recognise the names of the artists in the end credits) playing continually from Judd's jukebox. All this sound and light and colour, along with dust and fog makes for a palpable atmosphere, which is there regardless of the fact that there's a croc living in the swamp right next to the Starlight not because of it. It didn't hurt that it took me three weeks to watch the movie, for reasons completely unrelated to the film itself. Highly recommended.
Friday, 28 November 2008
Crashing Hollywood (1938)
After all the shenanigans Lee Tracy got up to in the precodes, it wouldn't be surprising to find him play an ex-con being released from Jefferson Penitentiary, but it's Paul Guilfoyle who gets that part. He's Herman Tibbets and he's done a stretch safecracking for the Hawk, but he's very keen on not going back and spending the rest of his life raising ducks. Unfortunately his wife Goldie has a black heart, to the degree that she even picks him up in a stolen car and she quickly talks him into robbing a fellow passenger, Mike Winslow, played by Lee Tracy.
Unfortunately for them, Winslow isn't the thief they think he is and he doesn't have $50,000 of stolen bonds in his briefcase for them to liberate for their own end. He's really a screenwriter heading for Hollywood to make his fortune. Fortunately though, he writes crime stories without really knowing anything about crime, and the Tibbetts are just the people to make them realistic. They have a real story to tell too, to show the entire world what a heel the Hawk is. The catch is that in doing so they deliberately use real names and real events and it isn't too surprising that the Hawk gets a little upset to find out that Trail of the Hawk is all about him and the Austin Bank & Trust robbery.
Unfortunately for us, this isn't a precode. Like Warren William, there just weren't parts for Lee Tracy once the code hit because he was at his best playing fast talking characters that slid back and forth wildly from morality to immorality and back. He's fine here but the part isn't worthy of him and there's only so much he could do with it. Paul Guilfoyle (not the modern one best known for CSI) is terribly wooden to begin with but he's actually a pretty good fit for the part. Lee Patrick and Bradley Page are decent, but best of all is Richard Lane as Hugo Wells, the effusive studio boss at Wonder Pictures. He comes out with lines like, 'It'll take more than a Hawk to stop a Wonder picture!' and is responsible for most of the joy in this film, probably presaging his work as an announcer of wrestling, roller derby and midget car racing.
The story is pretty dumb, even for Hollywood. There's a love interest angle that's almost entirely pointless and almost entirely annoying, even though there's nothing wrong with Joan Woodbury's performance. You won't be surprised to learn that the Hawk and the actor playing the Hawk look so alike that they're played by the same actor, Bradley Page, and there's the inevitable comedy of errors nonsense. Winslow may need Tibbetts to write his scripts but the writers of this one could have done with our help to make it a little less obvious. However dumb it is, there's still fun to be had, but surprisingly it's more for Richard Lane than Lee Tracy. It's good to see him in something where he doesn't lose out the way Inspector Farraday always seemed to do in the Boston Blackie films.
Unfortunately for them, Winslow isn't the thief they think he is and he doesn't have $50,000 of stolen bonds in his briefcase for them to liberate for their own end. He's really a screenwriter heading for Hollywood to make his fortune. Fortunately though, he writes crime stories without really knowing anything about crime, and the Tibbetts are just the people to make them realistic. They have a real story to tell too, to show the entire world what a heel the Hawk is. The catch is that in doing so they deliberately use real names and real events and it isn't too surprising that the Hawk gets a little upset to find out that Trail of the Hawk is all about him and the Austin Bank & Trust robbery.
Unfortunately for us, this isn't a precode. Like Warren William, there just weren't parts for Lee Tracy once the code hit because he was at his best playing fast talking characters that slid back and forth wildly from morality to immorality and back. He's fine here but the part isn't worthy of him and there's only so much he could do with it. Paul Guilfoyle (not the modern one best known for CSI) is terribly wooden to begin with but he's actually a pretty good fit for the part. Lee Patrick and Bradley Page are decent, but best of all is Richard Lane as Hugo Wells, the effusive studio boss at Wonder Pictures. He comes out with lines like, 'It'll take more than a Hawk to stop a Wonder picture!' and is responsible for most of the joy in this film, probably presaging his work as an announcer of wrestling, roller derby and midget car racing.
The story is pretty dumb, even for Hollywood. There's a love interest angle that's almost entirely pointless and almost entirely annoying, even though there's nothing wrong with Joan Woodbury's performance. You won't be surprised to learn that the Hawk and the actor playing the Hawk look so alike that they're played by the same actor, Bradley Page, and there's the inevitable comedy of errors nonsense. Winslow may need Tibbetts to write his scripts but the writers of this one could have done with our help to make it a little less obvious. However dumb it is, there's still fun to be had, but surprisingly it's more for Richard Lane than Lee Tracy. It's good to see him in something where he doesn't lose out the way Inspector Farraday always seemed to do in the Boston Blackie films.
Sunday, 23 November 2008
Platinum Blonde (1931)
Here's a historic film that it's taken me a long while to find. It's an old Frank Capra, from the days when he still used a middle initial, but even more importantly it's the film that really set Jean Harlow's legendary status in stone. She already had Hell's Angels behind her, along with The Secret Six and The Public Enemy, and she hadn't really learned to act but yet, but she had all the charm and magnetism anyone ever had. No wonder half the country fell in love with her: it's watching films like this that make that entire concept believable. Loretta Young and Robert Williams may have the top credits but the title is all about Harlow, and while she could never really be a society girl, she's still enough to give you shivers.
And yet as fundamentally irresistible as she is here, she doesn't steal the film. I hadn't even heard of Robert Williams, who shines like a star as reporter Stew Smith from the Post. He's about two thirds Bing Crosby and a third Bill Murray, and what's most intriguing is that he was there first. Crosby's first film was in 1930 and Williams's last was this one in 1931: he died of peritonitis four days after its release. I wonder how much Crosby stole from Williams, especially given that anyone who hasn't seen this film wouldn't ever have known different. He's a riot and if anything he's the one who steals scenes: his timing is perfect and he plays the part so fresh that everyone else picks up on it and the enthusiasm becomes so contagious that it rubs off on us.
Stew Smith is a reporter and he's sent to the Schuyler residence to investigate the sort of unsavoury rumours that plague the rich. The Schuylers are very rich: you know that much when you see Louise Closser Hale is the matriarch. Apparently Michael Schuyler has fallen prey to a young lady known to the press as the Human Cash Register, who they've paid $10,000 to leave him alone, and Smith doesn't take long to root that little snippet out. He doesn't take long to fall for Anne Schuyler too, and she falls back, leaving them a surprising couple after a quick elopement.
The third wheel is Smith's sidekick at the Post: Gallagher, only ever referred to by her surname, is a rather lovely young lady played by the very talented Loretta Young. Her name is top on the credits but she has the least to do: as Stew Smith marries Anne Schyler, she can only sit back and quietly hurt because she's head over heels in love with him. For his part he thinks the world of her, but hardly even notices that she's a woman let alone one who's quite obviously pining for him. Of course she's an ever present third wheel because Stew is trying to turn Anne into his sort of woman and Anne is trying to turn Stew into her sort of man, neither attempt of which isn't going too well but Anne's winning. Stew now has a valet, is wearing garters and is turning up to dinners with the ambassador. He's also ceasing to be Stew Smith, he's 'Anne Schyller's husband', 'the Cinderella Man', and 'a bird in a gilded cage'.
The story isn't too surprising but it's executed wonderfully. Williams drives the film with an astounding energy and style, and his loss must have been seriously felt. He only made seven films, four in 1931, and this was the last of them all. I'll definitely be seeking them out now. Harlow is irresistible and Young is quietly charming. She's perfectly desirable while still being 'one of the boys'. Backing them up are reliable supporting players like Louise Closser Hale, Halliwell Hobbes and Reginald Owen and Capra keeps the whole thing rolling along nicely. It's not a deep story by any means, but it's done about as well as you could imagine.
And yet as fundamentally irresistible as she is here, she doesn't steal the film. I hadn't even heard of Robert Williams, who shines like a star as reporter Stew Smith from the Post. He's about two thirds Bing Crosby and a third Bill Murray, and what's most intriguing is that he was there first. Crosby's first film was in 1930 and Williams's last was this one in 1931: he died of peritonitis four days after its release. I wonder how much Crosby stole from Williams, especially given that anyone who hasn't seen this film wouldn't ever have known different. He's a riot and if anything he's the one who steals scenes: his timing is perfect and he plays the part so fresh that everyone else picks up on it and the enthusiasm becomes so contagious that it rubs off on us.
Stew Smith is a reporter and he's sent to the Schuyler residence to investigate the sort of unsavoury rumours that plague the rich. The Schuylers are very rich: you know that much when you see Louise Closser Hale is the matriarch. Apparently Michael Schuyler has fallen prey to a young lady known to the press as the Human Cash Register, who they've paid $10,000 to leave him alone, and Smith doesn't take long to root that little snippet out. He doesn't take long to fall for Anne Schuyler too, and she falls back, leaving them a surprising couple after a quick elopement.
The third wheel is Smith's sidekick at the Post: Gallagher, only ever referred to by her surname, is a rather lovely young lady played by the very talented Loretta Young. Her name is top on the credits but she has the least to do: as Stew Smith marries Anne Schyler, she can only sit back and quietly hurt because she's head over heels in love with him. For his part he thinks the world of her, but hardly even notices that she's a woman let alone one who's quite obviously pining for him. Of course she's an ever present third wheel because Stew is trying to turn Anne into his sort of woman and Anne is trying to turn Stew into her sort of man, neither attempt of which isn't going too well but Anne's winning. Stew now has a valet, is wearing garters and is turning up to dinners with the ambassador. He's also ceasing to be Stew Smith, he's 'Anne Schyller's husband', 'the Cinderella Man', and 'a bird in a gilded cage'.
The story isn't too surprising but it's executed wonderfully. Williams drives the film with an astounding energy and style, and his loss must have been seriously felt. He only made seven films, four in 1931, and this was the last of them all. I'll definitely be seeking them out now. Harlow is irresistible and Young is quietly charming. She's perfectly desirable while still being 'one of the boys'. Backing them up are reliable supporting players like Louise Closser Hale, Halliwell Hobbes and Reginald Owen and Capra keeps the whole thing rolling along nicely. It's not a deep story by any means, but it's done about as well as you could imagine.
The Giant Spider Invasion (1975)
After the celluloid abortion that was Monster a Go-Go, it's a wonder that anyone let Bill Rebane anywhere near a camera again. Admittedly he wasn't responsible for all of it but given that there wasn't a single redeeming factor in the entire film, it doesn't say much for his talent. Needless to say this is better, not just on the basis that it couldn't be worse but on the basis that it's actually a pretty enjoyable film, one that positively shines when you realise the sort of budget Rebane had to work with. There was another big monster movie made in 1975 that I'm sure you know pretty well, and it even gets a mention. 'Ever seen that movie Jaws?' asks the sheriff. The giant spider of the title 'makes that shark look like a goldfish.'
Well, no it doesn't. Needless to say this doesn't hold a candle to Jaws, but Steven Spielberg had $12m to work with and Bill Rebane had $250,000. For one fortyeighth of the budget, I think Rebane did a stunning job. Don't get me wrong: this is not a great film, but where Monster a Go-Go is a bad bad movie, this is a good bad movie. Where Monster a Go-Go is a film to just not watch, this is a film to watch and enjoy, especially if you're drunk and with a bunch of buddies. No wonder it's listed among John Wilson's 100 Most Enjoyably Bad Movies Ever Made because that's a pretty fair description.
The title says it all. We're in northern Wisconsin where some sort of meteorite has crashed to Earth bringing with it a whole slew of geodes containing various species of what are apparently radioactive spiders from a parallel universe. Or something like that. These spiders do a little bit of running around making the local hillbilly women jump, but they also grow in size. Before you know it there's a fifty foot spider roaming the countryside chasing whole carnival loads of people. Luckily there are scientists on hand who know gibberish so well it comes out of their pores, well two of them at least. One is a local, and NASA is so concerned for national security that it sends a whole taskforce of one more scientist to assist.
So why is this better than Monster a Go-Go? Well pick any reason out of a hat and it'll be valid. It's populated with real actors for a start, maybe not people like Robert Shaw, Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss, but people like Steve Brodie, Barbara Hale and Alan Hale Jr (no relation), and it looks like they all turned it into something of a family affair. There are Brodies all over the credits, not least Steve Brodie in the lead as the NASA scientist. He made this in between Jerry Warren movies like The Wild Wild World of Batwoman and Frankenstein Island, so it's definitely a step up. He brought his son Kevin along for a small speaking role, just as Barbara Hale brought her husband Bill Williams.
It's also huge fun: how could it not be fun with a Volkswagen Beetle turned into a giant spider? Part of the fun is that it's a delightfully schizophrenic film, due to the fact that the two writers had very different approaches. Richard L Huff took it seriously, so presumably is responsible for all the scientific gibberish, which is truly stunning. Steve Brodie and Barbara Hale, in the forms of Drs Vance and Langer, brainstorm the situation with more buzzwords per sentence than can comfortably be imagined, none of which have anything to do with the price of fish. Meanwhile Robert Easton, already an established dialogue coach, had fun with it, especially given that he plays the cheating hillbilly who owns the farm the meteorite crashes onto. Alan Hale Jr has the most fun, treating the film like a comedy, beginning with a Gilligan's Island reference (for the rest of the world who didn't grow up watching this show, he was the Skipper) and keeping the humour up from there on out.
So I need to pay more attention to Bill Rebane. Monster a Go-Go would seem to be an unfortunate starting point, though wandering through IMDb I realise that I've seen his work before: films like Rana: The Legend of Shadow Lake which I picked up on cheesy looking VHS from a market stall somewhere a couple of decades ago. That one came before this one, but he followed them all up with a few more and they're well represented in the various Mill Creek 50 film box sets. He only made ten films which leaves me eight to find, but I'm seeing five in these box sets: The Demons of Ludlow, The Alpha Incident, They, Twisters Revenge and The Cold. I'll definitely need to delve soon.
Well, no it doesn't. Needless to say this doesn't hold a candle to Jaws, but Steven Spielberg had $12m to work with and Bill Rebane had $250,000. For one fortyeighth of the budget, I think Rebane did a stunning job. Don't get me wrong: this is not a great film, but where Monster a Go-Go is a bad bad movie, this is a good bad movie. Where Monster a Go-Go is a film to just not watch, this is a film to watch and enjoy, especially if you're drunk and with a bunch of buddies. No wonder it's listed among John Wilson's 100 Most Enjoyably Bad Movies Ever Made because that's a pretty fair description.
The title says it all. We're in northern Wisconsin where some sort of meteorite has crashed to Earth bringing with it a whole slew of geodes containing various species of what are apparently radioactive spiders from a parallel universe. Or something like that. These spiders do a little bit of running around making the local hillbilly women jump, but they also grow in size. Before you know it there's a fifty foot spider roaming the countryside chasing whole carnival loads of people. Luckily there are scientists on hand who know gibberish so well it comes out of their pores, well two of them at least. One is a local, and NASA is so concerned for national security that it sends a whole taskforce of one more scientist to assist.
So why is this better than Monster a Go-Go? Well pick any reason out of a hat and it'll be valid. It's populated with real actors for a start, maybe not people like Robert Shaw, Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss, but people like Steve Brodie, Barbara Hale and Alan Hale Jr (no relation), and it looks like they all turned it into something of a family affair. There are Brodies all over the credits, not least Steve Brodie in the lead as the NASA scientist. He made this in between Jerry Warren movies like The Wild Wild World of Batwoman and Frankenstein Island, so it's definitely a step up. He brought his son Kevin along for a small speaking role, just as Barbara Hale brought her husband Bill Williams.
It's also huge fun: how could it not be fun with a Volkswagen Beetle turned into a giant spider? Part of the fun is that it's a delightfully schizophrenic film, due to the fact that the two writers had very different approaches. Richard L Huff took it seriously, so presumably is responsible for all the scientific gibberish, which is truly stunning. Steve Brodie and Barbara Hale, in the forms of Drs Vance and Langer, brainstorm the situation with more buzzwords per sentence than can comfortably be imagined, none of which have anything to do with the price of fish. Meanwhile Robert Easton, already an established dialogue coach, had fun with it, especially given that he plays the cheating hillbilly who owns the farm the meteorite crashes onto. Alan Hale Jr has the most fun, treating the film like a comedy, beginning with a Gilligan's Island reference (for the rest of the world who didn't grow up watching this show, he was the Skipper) and keeping the humour up from there on out.
So I need to pay more attention to Bill Rebane. Monster a Go-Go would seem to be an unfortunate starting point, though wandering through IMDb I realise that I've seen his work before: films like Rana: The Legend of Shadow Lake which I picked up on cheesy looking VHS from a market stall somewhere a couple of decades ago. That one came before this one, but he followed them all up with a few more and they're well represented in the various Mill Creek 50 film box sets. He only made ten films which leaves me eight to find, but I'm seeing five in these box sets: The Demons of Ludlow, The Alpha Incident, They, Twisters Revenge and The Cold. I'll definitely need to delve soon.
Monster a Go-Go (1965)
This one screams a glorious low budget and if Mystery Science Theater 3000 hadn't done a version of it I'd have been seriously surprised. Of course they did, and considered it the worst film they'd seen up until that time. Manos: The Hands of Fate came later. Made in 1965 in black and white, it has bad acting, bad dialogue and bad music. It also has bad sound and bad lighting so it's often hard to tell exactly what's going on, even with a clear narration. Then again that may be a blessing. There's literally nothing good about this film: not only is it bad but it's boring. Bad is understandable in a film like this for many reasons, boring isn't.
To be fair the main reason that it's so bad is that it's really two films. Director Bill Rebane ran out of funding on his film Terror at Halfday in 1961 and couldn't finish it. It would have disappeared without a trace had Herschell Gordon Lewis not needed a second film to play alongside his Moonshine Mountain three years later. He bought the footage, shot some additional scenes to finish it off (with new actors given that the originals weren't available) and added a narration and a new title. He was so proud of the results that he didn't even put his name on them: he's uncredited as a director and listed under the pseudonym of Sheldon S Seymour for his additional dialogue.
It centres around a space capsule sent up by the Americans and which crash lands back on Earth in a rural area amazingly close to the space base in Chicago. Yes, this film is full of mysterious coincidences. The authorities find the capsule, but they don't find the astronaut who was inside: Frank Douglas is mysteriously missing. They do find the man who found the capsule though, dead at the scene, with his body shrivelled up and his blood turned to powder. There are mysterious burn marks on the ground nearby and soon a ten foot radioactive monster is killing off local teenagers.
It's hard to understand why a film like this exists, without having been there at the time. I was born in 1971 in England and didn't even see a drive-in movie theatre until 1999 when they were a dying breed. Yet back in their heyday the youth of America thronged to them, though generally not to actually watch the movies. This really is the epitome of a film that young couples could happily make out during and thus know as much about it when they leave as when they arrived. Plan 9 from Outer Space is terrible but it's highly watchable. Even The Beast from Yucca Flats had colour and Tor Johnson on its side. This doesn't have anything except the title.
To be fair the main reason that it's so bad is that it's really two films. Director Bill Rebane ran out of funding on his film Terror at Halfday in 1961 and couldn't finish it. It would have disappeared without a trace had Herschell Gordon Lewis not needed a second film to play alongside his Moonshine Mountain three years later. He bought the footage, shot some additional scenes to finish it off (with new actors given that the originals weren't available) and added a narration and a new title. He was so proud of the results that he didn't even put his name on them: he's uncredited as a director and listed under the pseudonym of Sheldon S Seymour for his additional dialogue.
It centres around a space capsule sent up by the Americans and which crash lands back on Earth in a rural area amazingly close to the space base in Chicago. Yes, this film is full of mysterious coincidences. The authorities find the capsule, but they don't find the astronaut who was inside: Frank Douglas is mysteriously missing. They do find the man who found the capsule though, dead at the scene, with his body shrivelled up and his blood turned to powder. There are mysterious burn marks on the ground nearby and soon a ten foot radioactive monster is killing off local teenagers.
It's hard to understand why a film like this exists, without having been there at the time. I was born in 1971 in England and didn't even see a drive-in movie theatre until 1999 when they were a dying breed. Yet back in their heyday the youth of America thronged to them, though generally not to actually watch the movies. This really is the epitome of a film that young couples could happily make out during and thus know as much about it when they leave as when they arrived. Plan 9 from Outer Space is terrible but it's highly watchable. Even The Beast from Yucca Flats had colour and Tor Johnson on its side. This doesn't have anything except the title.
Sunday, 16 November 2008
The Blackbird (1926)
Sometimes TCM is really good to us. This isn't the legendary lost film London After Midnight, which TCM did bring us in a reconstructed version, but nonetheless it's still a combination of London as a setting, Tod Browning as a director, Waldemar Young as a writer and the immortal Lon Chaney in the lead, with a decent new score by Robert Israel to boot. I ain't complaining.
Here Chaney plays not one but two characters, though you'd have a solid case for three. He's Dan Tate, the Blackbird, professional thief and all round bad guy and scourge of the Limehouse district, itself home to all manner of bad guys. He's also the Bishop, a cripple who runs a mission whose motto is 'life is what you make it'. Everyone in Limehouse loves the Bishop and fears the Blackbird. What nobody except him knows is that the Blackbird and the Bishop aren't just played by one actor, they're one and the same person, Dan Tate apparently being able to endure the same legendary sort of dedicated pain as Chaney himself to put over an effect.
Even the toughest crook has a heart, and the Blackbird falls for a young French lady called Mademoiselle Fifi (no connection to the later Robert Wise film of that title) who is performing a cute little puppet show at a local variety house. She's played by Renée Adorée, who is far better in this part than she would be in another Chaney film a year later, Mr Wu, in which she landed the part of Wu Nang Ping, Chaney's daughter (and granddaughter: Chaney loved those dual roles), over Anna May Wong, a far better candidate who was relegated to being her servant.
The Blackbird isn't the only crook who falls for Mademoiselle Fifi. Falling just as hard is Bertram P Glayde aka West End Bertie, as high class a gentleman thief as the Blackbird is a working class version. West End Bertie is in Limehouse on a slumming party ('I say... we are going down Plum Alley to see the Chinkies smoking.'), which he's set up so that his men can rob them all in someone else's territory, and he sees Fifi at the same variety palace. Bizarrely, Bertie is played by Owen Moore, already a few hundred films into his career, who must have felt a little strange romancing Adorée, given that up until only two years earlier she was his sister-in-law. He does a great job though, in some scenes presaging Burgess Meredith's Penguin.
These two are much better than Adorée, partly because they're much better actors but partly because they have the benefit of playing contrasting opposites in a competition to win the favours of Mademoiselle Fifi. There's some great interplay between Chaney and Moore, as they sit round the table with Fifi inthe variety club and first realise just how much they're competing for her. Moore is restrained, full of quiet disdain, as Chaney seethes across the table at him. They're both excellent in this film, worthy foils, though of course Chaney gets far more opportunity to shine.
While it's annoying that Browning for some reason cut short a great scene partway through in which he transforms from the Blackbird to the Bishop, we get another opportunity to see this late in the film. It's always amazing to watch Chaney working one of his grotesque physical transformations, because he could do things that nobody else could, even today. Of course he was no slouch without such contrivances either, as his well known nickname, The Man of a Thousand Faces, would suggest. He gets plenty of opportunity here to demonstrate that and while some of it inevitably lurches into overblown melodrama there are some great subtle scenes too. Chaney was truly awesome at depicting inner pain and torment, and this film contains some great examples of that talent.
Unfortunately that talent didn't last too much longer. He had thirteen more films in him, but would be dead four years later of cancer, at only 47 years of age. That still outstripped the Renée Adorée though, who died at 35 of tuberculosis in 1933, only seven years after this film was released. Owen Moore outlived them all, dying in 1939 at the age of 46. Sometimes it seems that the silent stars either died young or lived forever. One that thankfully had a long career is Doris Lloyd, who plays the Blackbird's former wife, Limehouse Polly, here. She worked through five decades, but for some reason was never recognised as the talent she really was. She doesn't have much of a part here but she shines nonetheless, and anyone who can shine when sharing the screen with Chaney is worth watching.
Here Chaney plays not one but two characters, though you'd have a solid case for three. He's Dan Tate, the Blackbird, professional thief and all round bad guy and scourge of the Limehouse district, itself home to all manner of bad guys. He's also the Bishop, a cripple who runs a mission whose motto is 'life is what you make it'. Everyone in Limehouse loves the Bishop and fears the Blackbird. What nobody except him knows is that the Blackbird and the Bishop aren't just played by one actor, they're one and the same person, Dan Tate apparently being able to endure the same legendary sort of dedicated pain as Chaney himself to put over an effect.
Even the toughest crook has a heart, and the Blackbird falls for a young French lady called Mademoiselle Fifi (no connection to the later Robert Wise film of that title) who is performing a cute little puppet show at a local variety house. She's played by Renée Adorée, who is far better in this part than she would be in another Chaney film a year later, Mr Wu, in which she landed the part of Wu Nang Ping, Chaney's daughter (and granddaughter: Chaney loved those dual roles), over Anna May Wong, a far better candidate who was relegated to being her servant.
The Blackbird isn't the only crook who falls for Mademoiselle Fifi. Falling just as hard is Bertram P Glayde aka West End Bertie, as high class a gentleman thief as the Blackbird is a working class version. West End Bertie is in Limehouse on a slumming party ('I say... we are going down Plum Alley to see the Chinkies smoking.'), which he's set up so that his men can rob them all in someone else's territory, and he sees Fifi at the same variety palace. Bizarrely, Bertie is played by Owen Moore, already a few hundred films into his career, who must have felt a little strange romancing Adorée, given that up until only two years earlier she was his sister-in-law. He does a great job though, in some scenes presaging Burgess Meredith's Penguin.
These two are much better than Adorée, partly because they're much better actors but partly because they have the benefit of playing contrasting opposites in a competition to win the favours of Mademoiselle Fifi. There's some great interplay between Chaney and Moore, as they sit round the table with Fifi inthe variety club and first realise just how much they're competing for her. Moore is restrained, full of quiet disdain, as Chaney seethes across the table at him. They're both excellent in this film, worthy foils, though of course Chaney gets far more opportunity to shine.
While it's annoying that Browning for some reason cut short a great scene partway through in which he transforms from the Blackbird to the Bishop, we get another opportunity to see this late in the film. It's always amazing to watch Chaney working one of his grotesque physical transformations, because he could do things that nobody else could, even today. Of course he was no slouch without such contrivances either, as his well known nickname, The Man of a Thousand Faces, would suggest. He gets plenty of opportunity here to demonstrate that and while some of it inevitably lurches into overblown melodrama there are some great subtle scenes too. Chaney was truly awesome at depicting inner pain and torment, and this film contains some great examples of that talent.
Unfortunately that talent didn't last too much longer. He had thirteen more films in him, but would be dead four years later of cancer, at only 47 years of age. That still outstripped the Renée Adorée though, who died at 35 of tuberculosis in 1933, only seven years after this film was released. Owen Moore outlived them all, dying in 1939 at the age of 46. Sometimes it seems that the silent stars either died young or lived forever. One that thankfully had a long career is Doris Lloyd, who plays the Blackbird's former wife, Limehouse Polly, here. She worked through five decades, but for some reason was never recognised as the talent she really was. She doesn't have much of a part here but she shines nonetheless, and anyone who can shine when sharing the screen with Chaney is worth watching.
Saturday, 15 November 2008
Tropical Malady (2004)
Director: Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Star: Banlop Lomnoi and Sakda Kaewbuadee
As I delve deeper into Asian film I keep finding new surprises. I'm reasonably new to Thai cinema but I've already found dark comedy and quirky drama from Pen-ek Ratanaruang, decent horror featuring Achita Sikamana and powerful martial arts with Tony Jaa, along with the Thai work of Hong Kong director Oxide Pang Chun, one of the Pang Brothers. Here's something different again, an experimental film that works very hard to avoid easy definition, courtesy of writer/director Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
It's really two films in one, two separate stories that have much in common but which are yet very different. They follow the same general theme, that of seeking rather than finding, but are are told in utterly different ways. The first is a story set in the real world, the second in a world of spirituality. The first is a sound film with dialogue, the second full of sound but where the rare dialogue is primarily the subtitled speech of monkeys. The first has a cast, the second almost entirely only two actors. These two appear in both, but only one as the same character. Both halves are distinctive and uncompromising in their approach, somehow magnetic but nigh on impenetrable.
The first is a sort of gay love story. The two lead characters are Keng and Tong, played by Banlop Lomnoi and Sakda Kaewbuadee respectively, and we aren't really told much about them other than what we fathom for ourselves. Keng is a gay soldier working on the forest patrol and he pursues Tong, who works at an ice plant in the countryside. To suggest that this relationship is subtle really isn't sufficient: while there's always the hint of a gay subtext, it takes half an hour for it to actually state itself. Even then it's hardly what you'd expect and it's never truly fulfilled. The impression we have is that Tong isn't really gay at all, merely attracted to Keng in some other way that is misconstrued by us as well as Keng.
There's no plot here, no storyline, no explanations. We literally just hang out with these two characters and gradually come to an understanding of who they are, or who we think they are. We watch people drive, go to the mall, wake up, watch a movie, visit a temple, talk with a couple of elderly sisters. Unless you're really paying attention, you'd think that there was nothing going on at all, and I'm still not totally convinced that that's not the case. I do believe that it was very deliberately done though: while some of this is very carefully shot, there's little that really stands out. It isn't a collection of set pieces, more a collection of snapshots.
And then the first half ends in a truly unexpected and abrupt manner. As Keng sits on his bed looking at snapshots of the boy he's fallen for, the film literally burns up and goes black. Ten seconds later (I went back and counted), we're introduced to part two, which is woven around a tale of a powerful Khmer shaman who could turn into various creatures. Shot as a tiger, his spirit is now irrevocably trapped in the tiger spirit and he haunts the forest. Our soldier, presumably still Keng, ventures into the forest apparently to find a missing villager or some such, but who finds instead a naked ghost, covered in tribal tattoos and ritual scarring, and the tiger itself.
This half of the film has even less happening than the first half, but it's even more magnetic. The forest is evoked magnificently and there's some truly magnetic imagery going on: the tree coated in fireflies, the appearance of the tiger in the clearing. Even the infrequent use of title cards like 'the ghost is fascinated by the soldier's mysterious sound device' can only add to the tone of this segment. I can't claim to understand everything that's going on here, but after nearly giving up on Tropical Malady entirely after twenty or thirty minutes, I found that the more I watched, the more I had to keep watching. It's as an entirety that it has most impact and it's going to resonate.
Star: Banlop Lomnoi and Sakda Kaewbuadee
 |  |
As I delve deeper into Asian film I keep finding new surprises. I'm reasonably new to Thai cinema but I've already found dark comedy and quirky drama from Pen-ek Ratanaruang, decent horror featuring Achita Sikamana and powerful martial arts with Tony Jaa, along with the Thai work of Hong Kong director Oxide Pang Chun, one of the Pang Brothers. Here's something different again, an experimental film that works very hard to avoid easy definition, courtesy of writer/director Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
It's really two films in one, two separate stories that have much in common but which are yet very different. They follow the same general theme, that of seeking rather than finding, but are are told in utterly different ways. The first is a story set in the real world, the second in a world of spirituality. The first is a sound film with dialogue, the second full of sound but where the rare dialogue is primarily the subtitled speech of monkeys. The first has a cast, the second almost entirely only two actors. These two appear in both, but only one as the same character. Both halves are distinctive and uncompromising in their approach, somehow magnetic but nigh on impenetrable.
The first is a sort of gay love story. The two lead characters are Keng and Tong, played by Banlop Lomnoi and Sakda Kaewbuadee respectively, and we aren't really told much about them other than what we fathom for ourselves. Keng is a gay soldier working on the forest patrol and he pursues Tong, who works at an ice plant in the countryside. To suggest that this relationship is subtle really isn't sufficient: while there's always the hint of a gay subtext, it takes half an hour for it to actually state itself. Even then it's hardly what you'd expect and it's never truly fulfilled. The impression we have is that Tong isn't really gay at all, merely attracted to Keng in some other way that is misconstrued by us as well as Keng.
 |  |
And then the first half ends in a truly unexpected and abrupt manner. As Keng sits on his bed looking at snapshots of the boy he's fallen for, the film literally burns up and goes black. Ten seconds later (I went back and counted), we're introduced to part two, which is woven around a tale of a powerful Khmer shaman who could turn into various creatures. Shot as a tiger, his spirit is now irrevocably trapped in the tiger spirit and he haunts the forest. Our soldier, presumably still Keng, ventures into the forest apparently to find a missing villager or some such, but who finds instead a naked ghost, covered in tribal tattoos and ritual scarring, and the tiger itself.
This half of the film has even less happening than the first half, but it's even more magnetic. The forest is evoked magnificently and there's some truly magnetic imagery going on: the tree coated in fireflies, the appearance of the tiger in the clearing. Even the infrequent use of title cards like 'the ghost is fascinated by the soldier's mysterious sound device' can only add to the tone of this segment. I can't claim to understand everything that's going on here, but after nearly giving up on Tropical Malady entirely after twenty or thirty minutes, I found that the more I watched, the more I had to keep watching. It's as an entirety that it has most impact and it's going to resonate.
The Ghost of Yotsuya (1959)
Director: Nobuo Nakagawa
Stars: Shigeru Amachi, Noriko Kitazawa and Katsuko Wakasugi
Now here's a film that bridges eras! Made in 1959 in full colour, it begins as a samurai film but turns into the most obvious precursor of J-Horror I've ever seen. There's no technology to fear and no lesbian schoolgirls, but there's everything else. We open in Bizen, Okayama where Iemon Tamiya is lying in wait for Yotsuya Samon. They're both samurai but of very different classes: Samon looks down on the young man with contempt as 'a libertine' and 'an uncouth ronin'. That doesn't bode well for Tamiya who wants his daughter Iwa's hand in marriage, and so as it's patently obvious that approval is never going to be granted, he kills Samon and his companion.
Also present is his crony Naouseke, who wants Iwa's sister Sode for his own, and step one to that end is the death of the father of Sode's fiance Yomoshichi Hikobei, who just happens to be Samon's companionon this fateful night. Sure enough, Yomoshichi himself soon follows, ironically being murdered by Iemon and Naouseke at the Shiraito Falls, a shrine dedicated to revenge. Iwa and Sode have persuaded them to come here to pray for revenge for the death of their father, which Iemon and Naouseke have blamed on a noted villain, Usaburo, who has a memorable sword slash across his face.
Things progress down the invitable path for such a dishonourable pair. Two years later in Edo, Naouseke has Sode and Iemon has both Iwa and their baby son, yet everyone is broke and dissatisfied. The pair do work on occasion for a rich man called Ito but promptly gamble away the profits, so with nothing left to pawn they attempt something a little more audacious, hatching a plot for Iemon to marry It's daughter Ume. Of course this means that they have to kill off Iwa and this is we kick into definite horror territory. This film shouldn't be called The Ghost of Yotsuya, it should really be The Ghost of Iwa, as discovering the plot too late to avoid her own death, she comes back to haunt Iemon and she doesn't quit.
Early for a graphic horror film, this is occasionally clumsy, such as in how the happy ending is set up; and some of the gore is far from convincing, such as a severed arm, unfortunately one of the first gore effects in the film, but it picks up with a vengeance. In solid Japanese tradition, what we get isn't just horrific but genuinely creepy too, though of course what may be creepiest is that it's so unexpected for a 1959 Japanese ghost story. I was expecting something far similar to The Black Cat: a black and white period piece, slow but sure in pacing and subtle in its horror. Amazingly that came nine years later, but feels far more traditional.
This one has less staginess and nods to kabuki theatre, though the early scenes seem very ritual and lead actor Shigeru Amachi looks like he belongs on stage, but it has just as much of a deliberate and stylish use of lighting, sound and wind. Here that shocks not just in its intended effect but in demonstrating to us that what look like outdoor scenes are amazingly actually indoor sets. One in particular has Iemon raging insanely through haunting experience at the river bank where he dumped the bodies of his wife and the merchant he sets up as her lover. It's powerful in itself with the fading of light, waves of wind and the river of blood, but it also stunned me that it must have been a set.
I liked this so much I left it on my DVR to watch again later with my better half here to enjoy too. There are a few bits I want to get a clearer picture on, as I was a little confused at a couple of points. I also want to watch the first half again with knowledge of how the second half unfolds: this feels like the most obvious film of two distinct halves I've seen since From Dusk Till Dawn. And I want to see again the corpses nailed to shutters, the bucket full of snakes, the Japanese fondness for ghosts to defy gravity... among other highly memorable horror scenes. The second half of The Ghost of Yotsuya blindsided me. Let's see how well it works second time round.
I should mention the names involved, but I didn't recognise any of them. The director is Nobuo Nakagawa, who seems to be something of an inspiration to leading J-Horror filmmakers like Hideo Nakata of Ringu and Dark Water fame. Having seen this I'm not surprised, but I'll have to watch the other many ghost stories from his repertoire, not just the ones I've heard of, such as The Lady Vampire and Jigoku (both of which also star Shigeru Amachi) but others completely new to me like The Ghosts of Kasane and Black Cat Mansion. I'd seen Amachi before, in Zatoichi films, but didn't know his name. He seems to be a regular Nakagawa collaborator, as do many of the rest of the cast. Kazuko Wakasugi and Noriko Kitazawa, who play Iwa and Sode, made five films each for him, notable given that they only have nine and ten films respectively to their names.
Stars: Shigeru Amachi, Noriko Kitazawa and Katsuko Wakasugi
 |  |
Now here's a film that bridges eras! Made in 1959 in full colour, it begins as a samurai film but turns into the most obvious precursor of J-Horror I've ever seen. There's no technology to fear and no lesbian schoolgirls, but there's everything else. We open in Bizen, Okayama where Iemon Tamiya is lying in wait for Yotsuya Samon. They're both samurai but of very different classes: Samon looks down on the young man with contempt as 'a libertine' and 'an uncouth ronin'. That doesn't bode well for Tamiya who wants his daughter Iwa's hand in marriage, and so as it's patently obvious that approval is never going to be granted, he kills Samon and his companion.
Also present is his crony Naouseke, who wants Iwa's sister Sode for his own, and step one to that end is the death of the father of Sode's fiance Yomoshichi Hikobei, who just happens to be Samon's companionon this fateful night. Sure enough, Yomoshichi himself soon follows, ironically being murdered by Iemon and Naouseke at the Shiraito Falls, a shrine dedicated to revenge. Iwa and Sode have persuaded them to come here to pray for revenge for the death of their father, which Iemon and Naouseke have blamed on a noted villain, Usaburo, who has a memorable sword slash across his face.
Things progress down the invitable path for such a dishonourable pair. Two years later in Edo, Naouseke has Sode and Iemon has both Iwa and their baby son, yet everyone is broke and dissatisfied. The pair do work on occasion for a rich man called Ito but promptly gamble away the profits, so with nothing left to pawn they attempt something a little more audacious, hatching a plot for Iemon to marry It's daughter Ume. Of course this means that they have to kill off Iwa and this is we kick into definite horror territory. This film shouldn't be called The Ghost of Yotsuya, it should really be The Ghost of Iwa, as discovering the plot too late to avoid her own death, she comes back to haunt Iemon and she doesn't quit.
Early for a graphic horror film, this is occasionally clumsy, such as in how the happy ending is set up; and some of the gore is far from convincing, such as a severed arm, unfortunately one of the first gore effects in the film, but it picks up with a vengeance. In solid Japanese tradition, what we get isn't just horrific but genuinely creepy too, though of course what may be creepiest is that it's so unexpected for a 1959 Japanese ghost story. I was expecting something far similar to The Black Cat: a black and white period piece, slow but sure in pacing and subtle in its horror. Amazingly that came nine years later, but feels far more traditional.
This one has less staginess and nods to kabuki theatre, though the early scenes seem very ritual and lead actor Shigeru Amachi looks like he belongs on stage, but it has just as much of a deliberate and stylish use of lighting, sound and wind. Here that shocks not just in its intended effect but in demonstrating to us that what look like outdoor scenes are amazingly actually indoor sets. One in particular has Iemon raging insanely through haunting experience at the river bank where he dumped the bodies of his wife and the merchant he sets up as her lover. It's powerful in itself with the fading of light, waves of wind and the river of blood, but it also stunned me that it must have been a set.
I liked this so much I left it on my DVR to watch again later with my better half here to enjoy too. There are a few bits I want to get a clearer picture on, as I was a little confused at a couple of points. I also want to watch the first half again with knowledge of how the second half unfolds: this feels like the most obvious film of two distinct halves I've seen since From Dusk Till Dawn. And I want to see again the corpses nailed to shutters, the bucket full of snakes, the Japanese fondness for ghosts to defy gravity... among other highly memorable horror scenes. The second half of The Ghost of Yotsuya blindsided me. Let's see how well it works second time round.
I should mention the names involved, but I didn't recognise any of them. The director is Nobuo Nakagawa, who seems to be something of an inspiration to leading J-Horror filmmakers like Hideo Nakata of Ringu and Dark Water fame. Having seen this I'm not surprised, but I'll have to watch the other many ghost stories from his repertoire, not just the ones I've heard of, such as The Lady Vampire and Jigoku (both of which also star Shigeru Amachi) but others completely new to me like The Ghosts of Kasane and Black Cat Mansion. I'd seen Amachi before, in Zatoichi films, but didn't know his name. He seems to be a regular Nakagawa collaborator, as do many of the rest of the cast. Kazuko Wakasugi and Noriko Kitazawa, who play Iwa and Sode, made five films each for him, notable given that they only have nine and ten films respectively to their names.
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