Videotape Swapshop Review: A Chinese Ghost Story (1987)

From http://mutantville.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/A-Chinese-Ghost-Story-1987.jpg

Dir. Siu-Tung Ching

I've probably been watching too many trashier martial arts movies throughout the last through months. I adore their questionable dubs and erratic tones, but its good to watch one which is crafted exceptionally. Seeing this film again, you can see how much the Hong Kong cinema of the eighties was liable to catch the eye of Western viewers like me. Its also good to go back to this film when the first Siu-Tung film I covered on here was Belly of the Beast (2003) with Steven Seagal. This is not a cheap shot at Seagal, but reading the review below, or actually seeing A Chinese Ghost Story, you can see why I say this.

Review Link - http://www.videotapeswapshop.co.uk/19608/a-chinese-ghost-story-1987-director-ching-siu-tung/

From http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v394/Manos99/GHOST_STORY1-1.jpg

Tokyo Psycho (2004)

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Dir. Atara Oikawa

Strangely, as a bona fide cult film fan at this point, I'm not necessarily going to cheer on the low budget, straight-to-video and/or digitally shot genre movies. The simple reason is that I cannot stand the expected, that I desire great craftsmanship, inspiration, trappings of interest, something that makes a film distinct rather than another generic "crowd favourite". I will go as far as admire a mishap filmed on camera if it's different. Unfortunately this is rare in films regardless of their budget or what they're shot on, but low budget films have a terrible tendency to stay with the conventions, repeat a popular film again (from Halloween (1978) to Dawn of the Dead (1978)) in shoddy ways. Excluding my bias for Japanese cinema, of those low budget films from their country which are of interest, even the lowest budget and erratic ones have something of curiosity. First its clear that they look distinct from their Western counterparts - either the environments or even what cameras are used. Secondly, it's to the point I can differentiate between different strands in Japanese low budget cinema - those that encouraged experimental and personal filmmaking, the nineties video boom that helped bring the likes of Takashi Miike and Kiyoshi Kurosawa to the wide world, the Sushi Typhoon and splatter film from the late 2000s on that have been directed to Western cult film fans, and the uber-low budget works like the one I'm covering. And I've probably forgotten a few other key sub categories too. Thirdly, in general, there has always been a fluidity in Japanese genre films that allow them to stand out greater. A willingness to wander off from conventions and to do the unexpected even if they stay within the narrative structure. You can cross genres, the serious with the silly, the perverse with the normal, the technologically advanced with ancient customs. As I've dug deep into cinema from certain countries long enough, I've hit closer to a distinct tone to them unless they've been over influenced by the Hollywood aesthetics of now, even in the shambolic examples. Like with any other case it causes even a zombie film to be of potential interest when it's a Japanese film because it's the work of people with different outlooks to others bringing their own thoughts to it. I liked Tokyo Psycho knowing full well its drastically flawed and found wanting in places, for the fact of when its good and because of the above reasons.

While the cover itself is great in an unsettling way, the image and the tone its presenting doesn't really match to the actual film. It's suggests a splatter or extreme horror, especially with that title. ("Enjoy your Japanese splatter film..." was close to what the cashier said to me buying a second hand DVD, leading to a brief conversation about Miike and how he could stand everything except Visitor Q (2001)). Instead the film's more of a drama with a horror tone that grows as the plot moves along. It's a very dialogue heavy work despite still qualifying for its horror tag. Contrary to the unexplained opening sequence where a crazed woman wearing a surgical eye patch terrorises the protagonist through the post box slot of her apartment door, a lot of the film is horror in a dramatic sense that has the few moments of nastiness. A career woman is sent a sinister letter - chewed up, soiled, piano wire weaved into the paper - saying that she's only to marry the sender of it. The likelihood is that the sender was a mentally disturbed transfer student from her high school days who she brushed off, but unfortunately, while trying to juggle her everyday life to, it's becoming clear more than a single letter being sent is going to happen. The film could actually be taken up as a skewered take on the concept of marriage. The protagonist has no desire to marry, while her friend and co-worker reveals she's engaged. The stalker's desire to have the protagonist marry him is spurn from unenclosed desires, and there's a wraparound piece of a mother and daughter where all is not what it seems.  

The film, for all its potential flaws, was actually entertaining. I see it as an interesting blend of dramatics with schlocky horror which, with low, low expectations going into, only seeing it as someone who likes to search for obscure Japanese genre films, actually stood out. I cared for the characters and plot, and even now I remember aspects of it clearly more than films I tried to drill into my mind as being good which have fallen by the wayside badly. A film like this also emphasises the fact that, early on, I was taught that films, with exceptions, were all constructions and not reality. Actors performing on sets than leaving for the day. The danger that a day's shooting could be ruined if something gets in the way, and that during takes on intense scenes, the actress might be sat off-set talking on her Blackberry or drinking coffee as the killer eats a sandwich nearby. Lower budget works with less than perfect production value would be more rewarding for me, no matter how schlocky and tacky they are, because I would view them as much as the creations of people with little resources and find something enrapturing in them. My only issue with this, talked about in the first paragraph, is that a lot of these productions chose the least interesting routes for what to put onscreen. Dull, monotonous repetition of what has been done before, not very well usually either, made worse when some of these sorts of films are celebrated. (Which is also way I don't like slasher films either, but that's another day's story). Not true with Tokyo Psycho. It may be predictable in plot, but not in presentation or structure. The stalker, when revealed, is maniac and chewing up the scenery, but I like this hyperactive performance as it shows a commitment to going as far as possible, especially as few A-list actors would willingly have a form of real tape worm in their mouth like he does at one point. The characters are very much fantasy constructs, but inherently most films, not really changing from the first ever ones made with their small entertainments at all the last century or so, have characters who are exaggerations and archetypes, and the ones in this work perfectly. Of fascination, there's little of the extreme content you'd expect from a title like this film has, no nudity or sex, only some violence and extreme threat, and possible no blood at all. The threat when it comes about, against some moments of lurid horror, are actually played starkly and with a less-is-more tone, which actually turns out to be a lot more affecting and distressing than other films that take it further.

A lot of the film could be set in another country, although significantly you would lose the distinct look of the original locations - small, clinical white walled apartments, neutral clean colours, sparse city streets, the Japanese coastline. One advantage the Japanese low budget works have is that, somehow, even on such low budgets, the urban and rural landscapes, the former usually closed in over actors heads, the later dwarfing them, are incredibly distinct and inherently add character to the films. I would wonder too if the interesting idiosyncrasies of this film would be continued in, say, an American interpretation either. A lot of our English language films at this budget still keep to a rigid plotting that is a detriment, with the exception of those one-off oddities that appear occasionally over the decades. What's interesting with these Japanese films like Tokyo Psycho, entertainingly, is the small details including the flaws that you don't get in English language films. The lengthy scene at a school reunion, a small group of actors in a room, that both had a logic breaking moment that actually adds to the film's weird charm and that it takes it time with characters you will never see again, including a true-or-dare game with raunchy confessions and everyone looking at an old school photo. The boss at the protagonist's workplace who takes pleasure from being insulted and called monstrous in an odd friendly interactivity. How casually the stalker plot is depicted amongst the other drama, never heightened except when the music peaks up, including a piano literally being punched repeatedly at one point. That mysterious woman with the eye patch never seen again or made part of the actual narrative. Scrappy, messy genre films like this exist in other countries, and I prefer them to the "better" made ones usually because they probably say more about the people who made them then a serious document could. What an ordinary person would put onscreen if given the chance to make movies but with a few significant handicaps to work around. And I realise I take more entertainment legitimately from films like this, even with flaws the size of canyons, because they don't pretend to be more than what they are and succeed further because of this. Any clichés this film has are at least done in a interesting way for once.

Prata Palomares (1972)

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Dir. Andre Faria

Honestly, as physically availability becomes less of a concern in how I treat what I look to watch for in cinema, the question of how cinema itself is treated is subjected to questioning. The notion of what cinema is meant to do and represent; as I watch this sort of cinema more, concepts such as tone, politics and structure are broken down. The lack of availability of a film like Prata Palomares, and the fact that its use of Gimme Shelter by The Rolling Stone at the end will make it difficult to release the film uncut, makes the influence of films like this one more powerful for me, the suppression of films like it for distribution reasons adding to the potency of things it breaks. Films like this become difficult to gage with because of this, but have a more pronounced effect on your thoughts when you can gage with them. It's a perverse irony that this Brazilian film, made during a military government that prevented the film from being shown at two Cannes Film Festivals, is now only available for me to see, in a period of freedom of speech in most places, from a copy ripped from a VHS tape from an unknown dimension. Consumerism turns out to be more powerful than a dictatorship.

The film itself is about the dangers of compromise. Two wounded revolutionaries wait in a church in a local village for a mission to be started. One pretends to be the priest that was supposed to take over the church, at first using it to bring the people together against the corrupt upper-class family that runs the town, but through an existential crisis becomes a lapdog for their words. All of this is presented in an abstract and unconventional film which shifts from the polemic to the gruesomely surreal. There's material reminiscent of Alejandro Jodorowsky and Glauber Rocha. The violence reminds me of José Mojica Marins too, whose horror films made him an unexpected political rebel when the same Brazilian government that suppressed this film banned his too. Prata Palomares is its own unique, charged film though, which like many films from South America I've seen, have a rawness where local culture, of countries and regions, meet the complications of politics, morality and urbanisation with a vivid metaphorical and phantastical bent. There's a brutalness in the violence and despair felt by the lowest in social ladders even in an abstract presentation. It's incredibly passionate filmmaking that is desiring to create real rebellion.

I confess the first part of the film, where the rebels are by themselves in the church, shouting at each other, was a struggle. In fact, for its moments of goodness, it's the worst of experimental polemic cinema, that which would actually compromise any revolutionary message in how it feels like it's a herd mentality wrapped in broad, unintentionally ridiculous pretence. But when a woman, a possible Virgin Mary figure for the revolutionary cause, enters their bubble and one of them becomes the "priest", the film truly starts to become a great work. Full of transgressive imagery - cannibalism, a church as a literal execution dudgeon, police death troops assaulting people - the issue in the middle of its message of how the left wing revolutionary can become compromised, distorted and a tool for the state is still relevant today and gives this messy film power. How anyone can confuse what they should do, regardless of political bench they're sat on, and end up being a lapdog or a deluded liberator. It does have some compromised thoughts. At first this sole female character of note is there only to give birth to the children of revolution, although this thankfully changes, in a film of archetypes and stereotypes, when even destroyed she's still the strongest force of the rebellion. It's also a revolution where one of the evil, decadent family - American, older woman pasted up in make-up, corrupt little girl who adores the violence - is clearly signposted as such by being effeminate and gay. This is a minor detail but it's another irony to write about with this film, where the issue of what one character's revolutionary ideals are questioned, that the message of the film is questionable in small details, the danger of this coming off as a brutish, heterosexual masculinity being projected from the film rather than an idealism for a new political utopia apparent in aspects like this. Details that could retrograde these ideals to the same mentality of the decadence its rebelling against. With someone like Alejandro Jodorowsky, he had the right idea of presenting decedent sexuality not in terms of specific sexuality, but when all sexuality becomes merely to consume another through corrupt and visually grotesque tackiness.

Despite these few details though Prata Palomares still has a great deal to stand out. The "priest" at first has the right idea - that the Christian God and Jesus were subversives for the downtrodden, or at least question God but use the cross as a symbol of unity - but he compromises himself into the puppet for others who wish to crush humanity through brainwashed spirituality. His desire for peace and non violence becomes as a means to shut up the anger of the downtrodden in a very clever flourish at one point. What makes the film spectacular when it fully immerses itself into its plot is how complex and unconventional it is. Even when corrupted, or just insane, the "priest" can be right. He destroys his comrade's revolutionary streak, in the best scene of the film, by pointing out that for all his polemic words, he's lost the one word needed to make his desire for upheaval of worth. Christians just need two sticks together in the shape of a cross he says, and his friend doesn't have this but empty phrases. But the "priest" is also a coward and easily manipulated, suffering from the same flaw. When revolution is seemed to have been won in the ending, what he does is no less ugly than what the former leaders did - in fact its more pathetic and off-putting in its farcical delusion of utopia. The one sole exception who is consistent is the woman, a politicised Mary Magdalene, who beret the men throughout the film for their compromises, but even she is literally silenced.

The film is difficult, shifting in place and full of dialogue that needs to be digested. The acting is stylised, with large portions screamed at high levels and a character at one point ramming his head into walls out of self mutilation. Sometimes the rebels just scream for large passages over what they're witnessing. It's an aggressive and abrasive work which matches its rich, ideological questions with the form of a blunderbuss shot, surreal images and a unconventional time structure even when following its small plotline. Unfortunately this reckless, difficult filmmaking is rarely seen now because even alternative cinema seems to have a tendency to copy mainstream filmmaking. By the seventies film could be trangresssive and legitimately dangerous, with many films that are still difficult to assess or handle even today for the modern cinematic canon. Prata Palomares is chaos onscreen and it's not surprising it was suppressed by the Brazilian government of the time, not just because of its message, but its tone and erratic nature which obliterates any sense of good taste. The difficulty of the film, even that sluggish first quarter, is now a nectar for me as a viewer. I am bored by what is to be expected and safe; it means nothing because I will forget it and, even by the virtues of mere entertainment, not have enough to actually entertain me. A film like this challenges my perceptions and my politics, and for glaring flaws, the challenge is rewarding as a film viewer but also in expanding the thoughts in my mind. Sadly films like this can only be seen, literally, on a muddy VHS rip from origins I don't know of. Thus it feels like a need to find films like this is a minor rebellion to clean out what I've been stuck with as cinematic art. Less elitism, more bored frustration, and befitting a film made to promote subversive ideology for utopian ideas, its complexity asks as well that even the concept of cinema should not be left to follow one style but question it continually. 

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Representing China: Song At Midnight (1937)

From http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1574/278/400/28_1_b.jpg

Dir. Ma-Xu Weibang

The last of the Videotape Swapshop reviews for this series, and this is the sort of film that represents this edition of Halloween 31 For 31 the most. It shows where I want to take this blog in covering films like this too, but I can gladly say there are quite a few reviews of things like this now on here. The only other thing I will say is that, seeing this film, there's a huge area of thirties Chinese cinema that needs to be more available, just for how stylish it could be, from this one, when its very early in the era of cinema when sound was introduced globally. I can only hope that Ma-Xu Weibang is known for me beyond this film even if its thanks to a fan posting his work, out of their own free time and with the possibility of having it pulled down, who did it. Even if the subtitles for the version I saw were far from perfect, the fact that person actually made the film available with English subtitles is something I am grateful for.

Review Link - http://www.videotapeswapshop.co.uk/17058/song-at-midnight-1937-director-ma-xu-weibang/

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Representing Thailand: Shutter (2004)

From http://www.loyvideo.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Shutter2004.jpg

Dirs. Banjong Pisanthanakun and Parkpoom Wongpoom

To think ten years ago in the noughties, Asian ghost stories in cinema were an obsession for the genre, both in the films made in Japan, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and, with this film, Thailand, and all those English remakes. Ghost stories are still being made, but the trend has passed. I want to claim it was when The Eye remake (2008) with Jessica Alba vanishes from our consciousnesses after its cinema release, but even as the remake fad of those films finally died out there were still remnants being wringed out. If I'm permitted to reference old podcasts I listen to again, paying lip service to Mondo Movies for another time, I'm reminded of how one of the presenters said these films eventually descended down into random objects being possessed by evil than actual tension - "eck, it's in the walls!", "No, it's in the water!", "Oh, it's in my eyes!". Unfortunately Shutter, with its camera motif, doesn't provide evidence against this point in its existence.

From http://www.fantastique-arts.com/photos/2062.jpg

One night a couple, a man and woman, believe they've ran over a woman on a night-time drive home from a celebration. When its revealed that no one has been found afterwards, it becomes clear that the boyfriend is being haunted by a ghost of a young woman who keeps appearing in photographs. As it continues, this haunting reveals more of him than his girlfriend ever knew. For Western viewers, this type of horror cinema began with Hideo Nakata's Ringu (1998), a great start for the boom that begun. It was very much of its home country and of Asia. Unlike the West where religion has dipped in social influence and ghosts are an abstract idea, or in programmes where people sit in dark rooms about to scream when they feel the wind on their shoulders, spirituality is still significant and spirits of the dead still linger with those mortally alive. But it could be understood easily in the West regardless - ghosts are still scary even if we only view them through cable TV programming - and could be remade as PG-13 material for the ticket money of young adolescents. But Ringu is not a succession of jump scares tied around somewhat of a plot. It was mood, oppressive dank atmosphere, sombre drama which, when it went to the horror scenes, chilled the spine, the idea of the dead being on your mind for your ordinary lives disturbing when you encounter a malevolent ones. Shutter is from another country, Thailand, with its own cultural marks on it, but that doesn't excuse that its only sense of horror is a succession of uninteresting jump scares, a flaw that is understandable in any language.

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It suggests something interesting, like many films, that when you investigate past the surface, behind the bookshelf or in certain images, you will see secrets of another person you never considered being tangible with them. This film even juggles having a segment with a paranormal magazine that doctors fake ghost photographs with a conceit suggesting certain types of photos will be always legitimate. But Shutter is such a dull film. The story, full of dark secrets, is not interesting, and being scary is not possible when you do jump scares continually and use obvious ones repeated from other movies. Neither does it help that, if you are not engaged with a film, the mechanism of a jump scare, pulling you in them making you jump, doesn't work then on that viewer. Neither does it look visually interesting for a ghost story like this to work. Shutter ultimately contributes nothing of real interesting beyond the basics and maybe a joke that suddenly happens in a men's bathroom. No oppressive mood, no cultural details aside from a scrap of things, nothing that distresses or creeps you out. It's an average rollercoaster wrapped around an uninspired mortality drama, even squandering the photography idea it carries in its potential. Shutter was only made in 2004, but suggests this subgenre was already in danger of falling back into obscurity that early on. 

From http://horrorsnotdead.com/wpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/shutter-32.jpg

Also Representing the US of A: The Entire Twilight Saga (2008-2012)

From http://moviefarm.co.uk/image/2010/04/twilight.jpg

Dirs. Catherine Hardwicke (Twilight), Chris Weitz (New Moon), David Slade (Eclipse), and Bill Condon (Breaking Dawn Part 1 & 2)

To ignore films that are marketed for a female audience would be a hypocritical stance for me. I want to cover anything of interest, and regardless of the gender of the target audience, if its interesting on first glance, I will look into it. And I'm not reviewing this series as a joke entry for this blogathon either, but completely seriously as someone who actually wanted to see this entire series for myself all the way through, revisiting the first three parts, and considering how significant these films are in pop culture. There's more chance of hell freezing than me rewatching Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films after nearly falling asleep in the first one on a repeat viewing a while back, but this series I had no issues with whatsoever. The results, in one of the longest reviews I've posted for Videotape Swapshop, of watching all five films and developing my thoughts on them were more complicated and interesting than I may have suspected beforehand. Aside from that, said review should speak for itself. Just bear in mind, said review will contain gratuitous references to sparkling vampires.

Review Link - http://www.videotapeswapshop.co.uk/17311/technically-a-twilight-eclipse-2010-review-but-more-about-the-whole-twisted-series/

(Unfortunately) Representing the Philippines: The Killing of Satan (1983)

From http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_BK-6fWMP6m4/S99R0GSdOOI/AAAAAAAAAIM/AOHAy7RDSyk/s1600/KILLINGOFSATAN-1.JPG

Dir. Efren C. Piñon

The Killing of Satan is awful. A candidate for one of the worst films for this year's series. I confess last year I controlled the choices for films to write about more strictly, hesistating to have to write negative reviews but going by nationality now I've decided to loosen it, and sadly for the Philippines, this was a poor film to represent them. A father of two, although his son is killed in opening establishing scenes and is never mentioned again, is called to replace his uncle in an isolated rural community. When his daughter is kidnapped by human mercenaries for Satan himself, wanting to make her his virginal bride, and his wife is harmed, he goes after them to rescue his surviving child, quickly discovering his capabilities for supernatural powers to help him in a war between literal good and evil. It's cheap, tacky, the version I saw had the type of English dub you get on these sorts of films which underwhelm your expectations further, and it's something like this which is a stronger candidate for the worst of cinema than Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959).

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWrylCWrvlQcNWKBnH1dXPugJtt6bBQXuAVSwRkLLHltyiGDWo3_wj3yp4QGXTU9t8ARbE41g7ZRs5QZPWh9bzPSYV1ztD-NuQKIJ4kzwamqu0OzLGzc753nq4XBgixQa0oc2OKOB0W-RB/s1600/killingofsatan3.jpg

It's supposed to be a Christian battle of good and evil, with appropriate religious symbolism, but paradoxically it plays up to lurid content. The rudimentary gore is surprisingly violent and effects heavy, a poor man's Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky (1991), and there's a magical cage of completely naked, brainwashed women which completely jars against the film having a religious message. It's an erratic film in presentation, and frankly despite the presence of things I've just mentioned, they have little effect on you when the movie in its whole is completely dull to sit through. It's also the poor man's z-movie, far worse than well known examples I've seen, on a completely different plane, in how horrifically sluggish it is. It's strange moments - snake fighting, a dog attack involving one poor man being tackled to the ground in a living room by a real canine with its jaw around his arm - are really not that rewarding for the slog you're putting yourself through watching the whole film. To enjoy this, The Killing of Satan can only have merit if you give up on any entertainment value, beyond laughing at how bad it is, a perverse mindset to end up in anyway, and not doing this will make it hell to sit through. No amount of ridiculous, added-onto-frames magical/psychic power effects can prevent this film from being atrocious even on the scale of z-movies. It's something that's only rewarding, if there's another way to find entertainment in it, if you watch the potentially funny clips, separate from the film, on YouTube. That is not a good place for any film to be in, as it effectively means that it has been scrapped and recycled into clips while the rest is eliminated from the minds of viewers.

Randy Savage would be proud of that elbow power
(From http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wjtoZ_1jtxs/T423kxLZIYI/AAAAAAAAAYc/RRPJ7V5suTQ/s1600/killing%2Bof%2Bsatan-lando%2Bmagic%2Bdefense.jpg)

It's also a caution against the notion of any bad film being instantly enjoyable. Even if your soul has died and there is no such thing as a bad film to you now, you still would have a strict idea of what entertaining is, where the highest and lowest of cinema only is what interests you. The Killing of Satan is just boring, not rememberable at all. Even if it has ridiculous moments, and an impressive chest explosion, its only merit is if you watch the segments by themselves only, and never watch the whole film, because the journey of the hero against the forces of the Devil is completely worthless. Truly bad cinema is not rememberable. If you try to enjoy every "bad film", you are gullible to embrace something legitimately awful like The Killing of Satan; I have seen so much better for this kind of perverse kick of watching ramshackle movies, and this one provides me with nothing baring this review. 

From http://nekonekomovielitterbox.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/kos-052.jpg

Representing South Korea: A Woman After a Killer Butterfly (1978)

From http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a5/Killer_Butterfly.jpg

Dir. Kim Ki-young

After being tricked into a suicide pact with poisoned juice by a female stranger, a male college student enters a suicidal depression of his own despite surviving, but many things get in his way of a literal closure. The first an old man who refuses to die even when burned alive. The second a two thousand year old woman. The third, the key narrative, a history professor whose specimens of of Mongolian descent may be provided to him from fresh victims, and his daughter who has connections to the suicidal woman in the beginning. Kim Ki-young has been growing in stature, slowly, within the last few years. In the right areas you may know of The Housemaid (1960), his most well known and completely available film so far, and may have actually watched it for free thanks to cinema preservation and Martin Scorsese. The existence of a remake also from Korea also helps, but Ki-young beat the remake bandwagon by reimagining the movie in at least a few more re-adaptations. I can also say proudly, while a DVD release of this would be great, that this review is possible because the Korean Film Archive have placed films like this, difficult to see, legally on YouTube with English subtitles for anyone to watch. It's wonderful, considering the sorry state of availability of many films still, that a cinematic organisation is making a canon of South Korean film history available, all there for me and others to pick through when we find it, and including stuff like Killer Butterfly next to the arthouse dramas.

From http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3LHL6RAV1xQ/UE0ePUfeNcI/
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Ki-young's film isn't exactly conventional genre fare though. With the growing amount of idiosyncratic, unconventional films making themselves stand out for this year's Halloween 31 For 31, against disappointing, bland or even unfinished movies, Killer Butterfly is just as different. In another's hands this would be a melodramatic mess which drops plotlines all over the place, but with Ki-young, it's both an immensely engaging journey but also all connects together into the central themes. The male student is forced into what is revealed, in an ending just as out-of-the-blue as The Housemaid but set up clearly, to be a crisis in his existence, debating if life is worth it at all. Three things stop him. The first is where one's will, the old man's, refuses to die and refuses to leave him alone. The second, including human livers and sex surrounded by increasingly created pastries (?!), is the potential for life or sacrificial death that he squanders because of either the moral cost or his own life that it would involve. This pulls him into the third, especially the daughter, where he is pushed away from how he wants to snuff his life out, or actually, how he wants to live.

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX4EBtT1GazqQBtwULq3Xs3uXj0JZnFo7kYb2WBIMtBD019F24fwH8wKMeronZFxAFr1bsITKI6mqS3fFiPYjKZA-3Cz_-ZfVV0EnFv6dbmddtOigp9cEky6Dv_VMCZIuxMDANfCUKw6E/s1600/KB03.jpg

To achieve this, Ki-young has no issues with using genre tropes with heavy aesthetics. Bright coloured lighting and coloured gels, and distinct decor designs for interior scenes all create a distinct, hyperactive tone for a film which knowingly gets ridiculous in tone. It's very much in touch with lurid b-movie horror and thriller films, but like immensely auteurist works created with one's own determination, it feels like you are swimming through the creator's id. Gender divide and conflict are very much an issue for the director, especially when it gets to the third part, as are sexuality, and the clear themes of death and one's existence. The fact that the three parts do connect together, in the tone of a complete fever dream, is a success for Ki-young being able to make such a tonally bizarre film work on a simplistic level when you understand the wavelength he is on. Once you do, is also becomes apparent that our protagonist is far from likable while yet still understandable decades later now - a miserable, selfish youth who only cares about offing himself, yet aimless in his existence and alone in poverty, eating the same noodles day-in-and-day-out, he understandably suffers from a lack of any progression in his life that can only be shocked out of him when he sees the absurdity and weirdness that death can involve. Even the Professor and his daughter are trapped in themselves, the former through his obsession with historical ethnography of his ancestors, which could make him an accidental accomplice to murder and corpse desecration, and the later by a pact and the fragility of the body that makes this pact grow to an impossible place to abandon. The absurd push in the ending, like The Housemaid's, feels like Ki-young wanted to viewer not to walk out of the cinema with a clear cut conclusion that would close the idea and make them able to ignore it. When the protagonist gets a new lease on life, so should we think about it while admiring such demented imagery the film has. Heady stuff indeed, but to Killer Butterfly's credit, mixing these ideas with lurid genre tropes makes the ideas more significant. Instead of cased in petrifying drama, the oddity of it gets stuck in your mind, and gives the late Ki-young more potent messages, his will like that of the old man still managing to survive through them and the most ridiculously awesome use of a model skeleton you could find in cinema.

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlM12IWqsbjQ4lS1o338PB0aK-snIyj7u8Kfsd2EGbgrEqOVI6zjr2on2jvytZt8Hl4xzHkul5nFdmxQZGq43UV4nSht7WQ-zEtoKBn6-3fp8f4zSM-Bv0l6vmpfK2e67GhysuFzj2bfQ/s1600/KB01.jpg

Representing India: Mahakaal (1993)

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Dirs. Shyam Ramsay and Tulsi Ramsay

What can I say? It's A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984), Bollywood horror style! This film was one I considered covering for last year, the first of Halloween 31 For 31, but it was only now I saw it. And sadly all that anticipation was for little. As much as I was openly hoping for something ridiculous, I always desire it to be this way with affection for the film, sympathy even, finding the concept of laughing harshly at a movie's incompetency repellent. I desire to laugh because there is quality to said film or out of delight of the film trying at least. I was hoping Mahakaal would be a legitimately good film even - just because its ripping off a Wes Craven film doesn't mean it couldn't be good. This is not the case.

From http://media.avclub.com/images/385/385277/16x9/627.jpg?5497

The premise is somewhat the same. A being able to kill young college students in their dreams targets people surrounding a young woman and her police commissioner father. Unlike the original, the mysterious claw gloved man has a personal vendetta against the father rather than a whole community, and will take his remaining daughter too along with anyone else because he is evil to the point of being an actual demon. With Mahakaal, the one main concern with the usual structure of Indian cinema becomes obvious, what could be the biggest advantage for certain films but also the greatest, crippling one for others. Bollywood cinema is usually up to three hours long. On the plus side, it would allow depth for a film, but on the negative side, if the film hasn't enough material to fill the length out, it will feel laborious. The other issue is that traditional Bollywood cinema doesn't stay in one genre. The musical numbers, for most films, are there to stay, but they can also be action, romance, horror, melodrama, westerns, and even more than those mentioned. This hybrid of these two aspects, to give Indian audiences a night's entertainment worth their cinema tickets, can work and was what I was hoping for - for example Yash Chopra's Darr (1993) about a psychopathic stalker which yet has musical numbers and cricket jokes that's been on my mind for years since seeing it. With Mahakaal, it becomes apparent the structure is a disastrous mess when the main villain, after an opening scare scene, is only properly introduced after thirty minutes in a film that's only two hours, twelve minutes long. It's still drastically longer than the original Wes Craven film, but since average Western made films can be up to two hours long, only those extra twelve minutes stand out. But by the one hour mark, the film feels like two unremittingly dull hours already.

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When it does actually be A Nightmare On Elm Street, Indian style, it shows how it could have been a good film. The jump in style - bright colour, Evil Dead-style prowling camera shots - makes it interesting, and even in vaguely recreating scenes from the original film, it does its best at something spectacular. It brings in snakes, torture dungeons, even borrowing a famous moment from Day of the Dead (1985) with great aplomb. Gems of a potentially great film are lost in one that is just a dreadfully made, incoherent mess. The requisite songs are in the wrong places, and in some desire for action, kung fu fight scenes are included with people who do not know kung fu. The guiltiest party in the badly put together nature of the film is the chubby comic relief Johnny Lever. Possibly a great comedian in another film, here the movie has betrayed the skills he may have horrifically. At first it's hilarious that he walks in dressed like Michael Jackson, with the same hair and a tune, that (with some copyright infringing balls) recreates the tempo of Thriller, playing as he enters. Quickly into said scene I couldn't help but wish the dream stalking killer put the character on his To-Kill list, especially as later on the desire of the directors for comedy sketches with him becomes a jarring series of inclusions. The actor eventually gets shoved into the viewer's face until it destroys the pace of the film, the main plot suddenly being ditched so he can rescue two girls from near gang rape as a clumsy, comedic superhero, ?!, or for his unknown half siblings played by him to wander in for a running gag that isn't funny. Mahakaal is only half its length about the main story, half an actual horror film, and the results are hellishly disjointed to sit through. I like unruly, atonal films, but the ones I grow fond of still have some focus. Say what you want with Turkish Star Wars (1982), but no matter how bad it can get technically, it still focuses on a plot or a consistent idea and the abrupt tangents interfere with this for a great, unforeseen effect. Godfrey Ho, no matter how bizarre he can get, literally needed some consistency so when he stitched together two different films together he could try and make it actually make some sense despite the massive gaps in the results. Mahakaal is far too messy in its structure to be entertain, and the results are despairing. Sadly it proves that remakes/ripoffs of something from another country should be treated with caution because quality even in terms of amusing may be nonexistent.

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiT81W7YlD0dlRoCXLM7jYgNFYMKogt0UbxAdb3MVT97h2aUL9u9Oe8EbpIKfIpmCyBHI-LjAKJT1LkJLoxKA2pJP6GqC9jzK1xFGoTzR1RKNAFG9I93LJzYmPSuROpPlYkKKWDiAHnjuJG/s1600/m3.JPG

Representing South Africa, With A Little Britain Thrown In - Dust Devil (1992)

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJjEdXYhnldgA7Sjib07S2jsssccMOUSL080frPv0BrMznaU-RzzJBp-WKhNczXQbzNJNbenGZ_xm_bTMvD06x_vjR-QZ0ztLb0-WMsRJE5k1cAFrOfZd1lZKF5NfJyHLKmUMkgWVqSunj/s1600/Dust+Devil+cover.jpg

Dir. Richard Stanley

Rewatching Dust Devil, it's what I wish would exist more often in horror cinema. Too often it repeats itself in the least interesting ways even when it's supposed to be intelligent. There are thousands of horror films in existence, and many of them are sadly not good. Dust Devil is thankfully made with a lot more on its side. Set during political upheaval, three individuals are interlinked together. A woman (Chelsea Field) who had left her husband after feeling she is suffocated in the suburbia. A widowed police detective (Zakes Mokae) who, as the police force is slowly being broken down and disbanded, is left on his own to track down a killer who commits ritualistic bloodbaths with his victims' bodies. Then there's the killer himself (Robert John Burke), a man with no name, a vagabond, who is not just a man but a being of magic who has existed for aeons. From the beginning, for some of the criticisms you can land of the film, Dust Devil is a unique creation with such craftwork to it. Visually splendid, it drags you into its atmospheric tone with its sweeping deserts, lost country roads, and slowly decaying and dying towns. Given a chance to do what he desired to make, the director Stanley uses numerous types of camera movements, visual manipulations, and choices in composition and lighting that stand out immensely. It creates a sense of something completely alien, melding the political strife of the period with the ancient and the nightmarish. The politics, the apartheid of South Africa slowly crumbling to pieces, complicate the story further, adding greater layers to the material as the human landscape shown is left desolate and lost, an environment in confusion where there is tension between everyone before even taking into consideration the being of darkness posing as a handsome, mysterious traveler. Already with this, Dust Devil stands so much above countless other genre films in how it is presented and what the content is.

From http://static.wix.com/media/ff562f_f0d30a2dff0c4a6ad36568dddc3d4706.jpg

For pieces of it so clearly connectable to other films, there's others that make the film stand out, and unfortunately "unsellable", including being butchered in length by Miramax. That the detective is a balding, older black African man. The heavy use of ritual and magic, through a former film projectionist/shaman (John Matshikiza) who acts as the narrator and the consort for explaining the danger of the killer. What starts with an understandable plot, of a supernatural mass murderer who encounters a woman alone by herself, is pushed into unconventional corners. Whether it's the atmospheric use of whale songs over sand dunes, or the abstract flourishes such as a watch whose hands are moving fast, the film feels like the creation of a director given only one chance to show what he could do, but he went further and used this sense of desperation to create such an unconventional work that seeps in its own particular, cohesive world. The setting is already effecting, a place of lost souls for the titular being to harvest, but it is unsettling in its violence and the special effects. Braver is the fact that, when most genre films now pull mythology through realism or candy coat it, this film is effectively the ancient, supernatural world making itself known on a rational, chaotic place, and the characters having to accept it instead of a rationalistic explanation to explain everything. It will take some people off guard how this irrational supernatural mood eventually effects the tone and structure of the film's plot, making its continuous narration actually justifiable practical, even if it's both a flaw but also a virtue in how it adds to its unconventionality. By its end, in an abandoned town buried in sand, the abstraction completely takes over the structure, and while it may put some off, it reaches a grand crescendo that is compelling for this viewer.

From http://isaacspictureconclusions.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/dd5.jpg?w=800&h=441

Mini-Review: Carnival of Souls (1998)

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Dirs. Adam Grossman (and Ian Kessner)

The late nineties in my mind seemed to have an obsession with evil clowns and ringmasters, circuses and carnivals places you'd likely encounter something nasty rather than just throwing up on the rollercoaster. I remember an arcade game I sadly never got to play, the scrolling shooter CarnEvil (1998). KISS had their reunion album based on a "Psycho Circus", and at some point the Insane Clown Posse became a legitimate cult born from the Juggalo consciousness. Baring in mind Carnival of Souls is about pretty serious subject matter, which I don't want to trivialise, you have to wonder if some people had really bad experiences about carnival rides and some really slimy clowns working in the circus back then. Technically, this is a remake of the 1962 cult film of the same name. Both are drastically different aside from the type of ending they share, and I need to see the original film again. Wes Craven is immensely varying for me, (possibly?) described as having the trajectory of a narcoleptic on a trampoline in terms of his films high and low qualities, made worse by the fact that I don't like The Last House on the Left (1972), The Hills Have Eyes (1977) or Scream (1996), so having him merely presenting this film has no interest. The only real draw of this film is remaking the original in the form that, from its DVD cover, it looks like you're getting Hellraiser, late nineties-style, mixed with a heavy metal mentality. Said cover doesn't really suggest what Carnival of Souls actually is.

Alex Grant (Bobbie Phillips) has been traumatised since childhood by the murder of her mother by child molester and carnival worker Louis Seagram (Larry Miller). An encounter with him when she grows up into an adult leads to a series of disorientating events where reality is completely disjointed for her. Chronology and place is liable to switch, and she believes Louis is stalking her despite the fact he may no longer exist. A carnival, near the bar her late mother owned and she kept onto, proves to be an ominous site and she occasionally sees horrifying, fleshy demons that no one else could see. The film is bad. Tired and bored. It's the perfect example of how a "mindbender" film, which un-anchors chronology, place and perception, is done badly and sloppily. Someone can argue a film like David Lynch's INLAND EMPIRE (2006) is pretentious, but its design in distorting the concept of reality is still a masterpiece in craftsmanship. The best films in terms of design, placing the actual content to the side for another debate, are those which usually greatly divide audiences, where you are as lost as the protagonist and feel every sensation in terms of the distortion. The shifts in time in Carnival of Souls are laboured, trying to keep the viewer on their toes but with no sense of forcing you to be in the protagonist's shoes. It's like a generic blueprint, or a crude drawing with obvious flaws, being compared to a perfect illustration which weaves every part together. When it tries to include scares into its narrative as well, it feels pathetic and signposted, knowing the scare will happen, and that its actually not scary despite the prosthetics, making it lame instead. It's cheap jump scares with abrupt pop-ups by fleshy demons, and the actually story never goes anywhere as well. With this tone to the film throughout its narrative, it really starts to test one's patience.

Visually it looks flat, flat in a way of a TV movie which doesn't take any interest in the visual quality of the material as its being depicted onscreen, especially one that was originally designed to go to the cinema. On a positive note it also points to the fact that the last years of the nineties, which I thought could still be contemporary, are very much of their era, not in that they've dated badly, but that aesthetically even 1999 feels like a different decade. Looking back at it, even at moments of cringe worthy pop culture, is inherently fascinating even with a film like this that is very limited in its locations and narrative. However that does not defend how bland the film actually looks. Bland is the perfect way to describe it all baring some early computer effects. Bland is the perfect way to describe the entire film. The story, despite its serious content, never grabs you and when the ending comes about it has no effect. The result is completely unemotional, and with its carnival aesthetic it squanders it for bad drama and riffing on the demons of Hellraiser pointlessly. It presents nothing interesting and is completely forgettable, a scrap of an idea that drastically needed a great amount of craft on it to make it work. It needed to be at least a cheesy film about creepy clowns and where even the candy floss is suspicious, not something that tries to be extremely serious but is so unknowing about the level of quality needed to make it work.

From http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-39vjnjTq3D4/Tv0ipNzxxVI/
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R Is For... Rabbit (2005)

From http://www.animateonline.org/stillsfull/rabbit01.jpg

Dir: Run Wrake

Another short. I remember learning about this one from a television program which showed clips from various British made short films, mostly all animated in some form to my memory. If there one good thing about the British film culture, short films, while not getting enough attention they deserve, do still get some. They are/were shown on non-cable TV, are available online, and in some cases are shown before films at certain cinemas. What they need now is some sense that they can be just as significant and powerful as feature length films, and this already existing structure would help bring a potential renaissance in short form animation and live action works. The quality of the shorts themselves  depend on each short individually, but the following from the late director is a great example of what they can be like.

Review Link - http://www.videotapeswapshop.co.uk/15835/r-is-for-rabbit-2005-director-run-wrake/

From http://pivot.glenbow.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Rabbit-3_2005-Run-Wrake6.jpg

Mini-Review: Dead Hooker in a Trunk (2009)

From http://www.brutalashell.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Dead-Hooker-In-A-Trunk-DVD-art1-e1306338980540.jpg

Dirs. Jen Soska and Sylvia Soska

Very rarely does anyone become instantly good at their work the first attempt. Just because I'm writing about genre films here doesn't mean I've instantly become Kim Newman. Likewise, Dead Hooker In A Trunk should be seen as the first steps for the directors Jen Soska and Sylvia Soska, that shows how they managed to get a film created amongst themselves and with a small group in the film, and pushed them along to be potentially great in the future. As an actual film, its only worth viewing as a beginning attempt.

It's very unfocused. Four characters, the Geek (Jen Soska), the Junkie (Rikki Gagne), the Badass [sic] (Sylvia Soska), and the Goody Two Shoes (C.J. Wallis), a Christian volunteer and the sole male pulled into this situation, find themselves on a bloody odyssey when they find a literal hooker in the trunk of their car. There are plenty of surreal journeys taking place in films. Likewise, there are a lot of films made by young directors that are about the frivolous gore and tangents, Street Trash (1987) coming to mind. Unfortunately this film comes across like so many movies in which, no matter how it tries to be inventive, the content of the film and its practical gore effects are padded around a work that has no idea where it is going. It comes off as not really trying its hardest, almost abandoning the titular point of the thin story halfway through with a short, abrupt introduction of Chinese gangsters that go away immediately afterwards. Later plotting is just trying to plug holes up in a tone that has no real drive to it and is sinking quickly from the beginning. It attempts to bring the unexpected to the content, but comes off as messy without any effect. Only a few films can make this tone work, by utter accident or on purpose like with Frank Henelotter films, but that's because the tangents do have an immense effect on you or the entire narrative pulls on to keep you on your toes. This tries its best at its tasteless tone - never has limb loss been treated so matter-of-fact like it was a paper cut - but like the minor, tedious genre films which try a gonzo edge it feels like bad improvisation.

Visually, its unfortunately another low budget film shot on digital cameras which has to sacrifice its cinematic quality for cost. The shaking cameras through, always shaking even in dialogue sequences when they shouldn't, aren't as bad though as the mistakes in the editing, which botches a few key, sudden moments into practical effects to the point you briefly have no idea what is going for a second or two. Thankfully American Mary (2012) was the directors' film directly after this. It's far from perfect, and it's kind of startling how both films, from female directors, have a lot of violence against women especially in Dead Hooker In A Trunk, but it was a massive jump in quality. No abrasive use of loud rock or metal songs, potentially good if listened to separately but too high in the mix and not properly synchronised to the images and movements, a drastic shift up in the look of the film, and more importantly, really interesting ideas within the plot. In fact that film gives me hope the Soska Sisters will start to make some exceptionally good movies now they're jumped this high in quality already. I'm not going to give Dead Hooker In A Trunk a pass though, just because it's their debut, when its clearly lacking and more of a failed sketch of an idea they would improve on later on.

From http://media.jinni.com/movie/dead-hooker-in-a-trunk/dead-hooker-in-a-trunk-1.jpeg