Mini-Review: Voodoo Passion aka. Der Ruf der blonden Göttin (1977)

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Dir. Jesus Franco

Voodoo Passion is straight-up softcore. There is a story of such, but the main and consistent part of the film is the nudity of its female actresses and sex. It feels like a Franco film, a slow and deliberate pace, dream-like, but its streamlined back to the obsession with the female form more so than Female Vampire (1973). Your ability to like this film depends on your liking of mood in Franco's work. A newly wedded wife of a government official moves to Haiti, only to feel that her sense of reality is dissipating as she believes she's murdered people. As this happens, the sensuality of the local music, and the draw of both her husband's platinum blonde haired, and horny, sister and their maid servant, is becoming too much to handle.

What could come off as a "voodoo is bad" film, under the belief that she's being manipulated and with voodoo dolls laying around the house, actually turns out to be immensely different. Baring in mind it feels less like French softcore than the older film, but more Euro softcore, with said sister whose continually nude and lusting over her brother's wife, it's very much a reimagining of Franco's own Nightmares Come at Night (1970). There's shades of Female Vampire too in at least one moment. Far from feeling like Franco tritely repeating himself, it's actually cool that he was riffing on his own work repeatedly in different tones and styles. It helped that he never made the same type repeatedly each time - which may have made this sort of thing too much when he had the expansive filmography he had - and the interconnectivity of it all, that characters are doomed to be repeating the follies of previous Franco characters, is engaging as an idea in taking his whole filmography as one giant film. It comes off as befitting a musician whose main obsession, jazz, could be as much about repeating sequences from previous work and taking it into new improvisions. The thin plot for Voodoo Passion is enough for Franco to push his female protagonist through a series of scenarios where erotic and bloody incidents take place out of her hands. It also becomes apparent, even if depicting its setting as exotic, that Franco is on the side of the Haitians just because he leaps on the opportunity to use the environment's musical rhythms in his film's score instantly, mixing it with jazz as the film progresses. A lot of the film is people being taken away by the beats of the music, equal opportunity nudity by the bucket load, the entire film more of a musical piece than a narrative. Long stretches, when it's not the softcore sex, is lengthy moments of dance, of characters wandering rooms and outside, the entire eighty minutes or so a vast lengthy atmospheric piece.

Its definitely a weaker Franco piece. It does feel long trying to exist only on its nudity and music, not even a basic plot. Nightmares Come at Night (1970), which it takes its inspiration from, was drawing on an abstract air and slightly more complicated narrative. Admittedly the films which repeat tropes from his previous work, that I've seen so far, have felt weaker, though I don't dismiss those films at all, just that in this case, Voodoo Passion is definitely the weakest of the two. It mainly rests on its erotic material and it has to be viewed through that mainly. Is it sexy? Titillating? I confess to being attracted to every woman onscreen, and to Franco's credit the women (and men) are of many shapes and sizes, and that his actresses, even if lusted over, at least had a distinctness and charisma to them that made them more human than vacant. For a man who could get very scuzzy, the film is actually a lot more held back too despite the wall-to-wall nudity. Its solid visual appearance probably  explains this - this is not The Devil Hunter (1980) which does feel scuzzy - and for simple titillation this film is far and above most softcore of now, which is legitimately worse than something like this in quality in so many ways. Whether you can appreciate this film for that or not is entirely of a subjective opinion in this case rather than with other Jess Franco films.

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Representing England: Straight On Till Morning (1972)

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Dir. Peter Collinson

It's a great moment when you find something with no knowledge of it, no expectations good or bad, no idea what its actually about, and find out it's great. A Hammer production, Straight On Till Morning is not quite a horror film but is still creepy and is completely unconventional to most British genre films I've seen from this period in many ways. It's a surprise that Peter Collinson is the director of this too. Yes, he made The Italian Job (1969), but while its very well made, it's also a bit of a personality-less work too pleased with itself. And Fright (1971), a potentially great proto-slasher with Susan George, was dull. Even if it becomes somewhat more conventional by the half way point, this is such an unexpected surprise.

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A young woman Brenda Thompson (Rita Tushingham), clearly with some psychological issues, simplistic, almost childlike, naive with an incredible awkwardness with trying to communicate with others, leaves her home to go to London for her "Prince Charming". In London at the same time is a young, dashing man named Peter Clive (Shane Briant), almost childlike too, but like his namesake Peter Pan, more of a free spirited young boy with a clear idea of what he wants than innocent and easy to lead like Brenda. It's also clear very early on that he has a dark side, and when these two meet and start to live together in his home, his other side is just lingering under the surface. It's an odd film, a drama that yet steps into an unsuspecting territory for most viewers. The first half, before the two meet, separate stories, is played out in an incredibly dense, chronology breaking series of images and scenes back and forth, through almost modern editing, where you can see the events of a character new and how it was set up together one-after-another, the two separate threads quickly bounced between in a pace of an expert juggling act. I can't help but admire the gall to have made this section this way, and barring the almost drops in background sound when it skips from one place to another, at the same time or the past or future, and back again, it's done exceptionally well. I cannot help but expect these seventies genre films from my country to be workmanlike and plainly made barring the exceptions, so editing that's from the page of Nicolas Roeg, which it can actually pull is, is incredible.

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Quite early into the film, for her and eventually both when the characters are interacting, actors Tushingham and Briant hold the giant task of keeping their story up on their shoulders exceptionally. Tushingham perfectly conveys a girl who, frankly, is so awkward in her behaviour that unfortunately you would be put off if she tried forcing a question to you as a random stranger you encounter, but you sympathise with her too. Briant as Peter is as sympathetic; the nature of his character the viewer knows but Brenda doesn't is nerve-shredding, but the film lets you see why he is who he is, and feel pity for him still. But even she, quickly, realises something is amiss with him, racking the tension up even if she's still smitten by him. When it reaches the last half, when she meets him and moves into his house, and the abstract editing style is mostly dropped, Straight On Till Morning is still unconventional. The characters are so different from what you usually expect that their interactions, as her mother and others try to find her, that you cannot help but feel pulled further into the narrative. It's a very well made film, but also one even by this section of the story presents the material in a different way. Moments when the abstract editing is used occasionally again for aspects needing a break in conventional timeframe. The feeding out of characterisation that is structured drastically different from most films - we know the dark secrets of Peter, but the reasoning and detail behind it is what's slowly given to us. Even how the film ends is very unexpected. Sound design for the film is as complex in its design, especially the ending where its use of it is unbelievably disturbing. The ending itself doesn't wrap itself up in a neat package either for added and devastating effect.

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That I've never heard of this film at all before now is shocking in hindsight. Maybe it was too strange. The editing in the first half too much for many viewers expecting a basic one just to give them the obvious plot points. It may have not been enough of a horror film, but also encased in such a unconventional tone. Briant as Peter is a youthful and handsome man, but Tushingham really has to act outside one's comfort zone, not playing a "beautiful" young woman as one would presume there to be in British genre films, in a decade which would go to cover girls and sexpots, but someone who would be dismissed as an ugly duckling, contrasted with an actress playing the conventional attractive woman who is pulled into Brenda's life after she joins hers first. Tushingham also has to act out a performance, let alone act physically, as a character who is as awkward as she is, so easy to break, and with moments of really intense crying that would not be seen as "glamorous". Her performance and character reminds me of Sissy Spacek in Carrie (1976), with as much of a Herculean task on her shoulders, despite the importance of Peter being filled out with a great performance, which she overcomes and succeeds with immensely. Nothing about the film is really that digestible as a conventional horror film or as drama. Brutally, British cinema has a terrible tendency to be mostly celebrated for its mediocrity. Anything legitimately great, unless it cannot be ignored in its size or scale, is dismissed as an "oddity", or lambasted as pretentious or failed. The good news is that films like this one are available - this review could be said to be sponsored by The Horror Channel, a cable channel that says what it does on the tin - and we can appreciate our cinema culture now as Brits, with those few exceptions needing a release still, without having it be dismissed for the obvious BAFTA winner. Pretty snarky and cynical on my part, I know, but I'm not blaming the obvious, cheap targets like Hollywood's influence on cinema, but that Britain as a cinematic culture has been forced to pander to middle class viewers with no willingness to be brave or really imaginative. If a Hammer production can be this unconventional, it shows there is a refreshing alternative to this mindset, (and not necessarily a dismissal of the rest of Hammer's  catalogue either), and Straight On Till Morning is such a strange and uncomfortable work. With its ending, returning to it, you would expect any other film to continue on with the perceived evil being stopped and social harmony to be restored. It doesn't happen and it ends. The point of the story is gained through this abrupt end, the devastation already having effect and irreversible. It's not childish nihilism either, but sadness and surprise for two very damaged people who are not a glamorous couple who live in the suburbs. Gone is the compromise the director's most well know film The Italian Job was stuck with - where the celebration of antisocial frolics was tainted by having it being done "for Blighty" - and suddenly he made up for it with such a fantastic piece of dream fiction.

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“Excuse me... who are you?” [Perfect Blue (1997)]

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Dir. Satoshi Kon

Japan

Film #16, of Tuesday 16^th October, for Halloween 31 For 31

The day the late Satoshi Kon died at 46 of cancer proved to be a deeply saddening one in 2010. Not only was a talented creator lost when he could have made more great films, but in the anime industry of Japan he was still considered a young upstart. Many directors and designers from Japanese animation, televised or film, of stature are older or old men, and there are not a lot of fresh visionaries to replace them when they die. This even affects people who have no real knowledge (or interest) in anime in that Studio Ghibli, which even the mainstream knows about, is mostly structured around the films of Hayao Miyazaki and to a lesser extent Isao Takahata; the occasional director who is someone else (like their last release Arrietty (2010)) is a realisation from the studio that once Miyazaki and Takahata have passed on there will be no one to replace them unless someone is given a chance. Unfortunately, the Japanese anime industry has not let new talent get the experience as much as it needs, and as most anime caters to niche fan bases who regurgitate other anime and short skirted schoolgirls, nothing really creative is getting made to push the exiting talent excluding the odd director allowed to follow their own ideas or studios like Studio 4⁰C who used their music video and commercial work to fund their more unconventional projects (and one wonders, since they’re working on the new ThunderCats (2011) series, what they will create by themselves when they have time in-between it). To be blunt, the industry is in utter trouble if new talent is not allowed to breathe within it. Losing Satoshi Kon is a blow both as a director I discovered while getting into anime, and completely admired for his craft, and for the fact that the term ‘auteurism’ - despite the fact that teamwork and collaboration is needed to create anime and every member of staff deserves credit for a great work - in all its meaning of a distinct worldview and full creativity applied to him.

Originally supposed to be a live action film until it was decided animation would be cheaper, this adaptation of a novel by Yoshikazu Takeuchi, and Kon’s debut, had an incredible impact after its 1997 release, even to the point of Darren Aronofsky buying the American rights to the film and replicating a sequence for Requiem for a Dream (2000). (That a live action adaptation from 2002 also exists adds it to my To-Watch list).  Retiring from the life of a getting-past-adequately pop singer to become an actress, Mima Kirigoe is faced with a harsh reality when it slowly starts to disintegrate on itself. Death threats escalate to murders and Mima’s personality seems to split into another version of her who mocks her and acts on its own will. As she sheds her pop idol image, from pressure from her manager, through acting out an rape scene in a popular television series and a nude photography session, the stalker who views her actions as traitorous forms into a full blown disconnection from reality for Mima between her life, her character and masks, and the days themselves within a packed 81 minute narrative.

The closest to what Perfect Blue is structured like came in 2006 with David Lynch’s INLAND EMPIRE, longer, more abstract, but continuing with a similar theme of an actress, an ordinary woman putting on masks for a career, being sucked into a vortex within herself as a result of an outside threat. That film dealt with a cursed Polish film, while Mima has to deal with her immediate past as an ‘innocent’ pop idol idolised and lusted after by otaku, and a maturing young woman who wants to become a serious actress, even if she hates the idea of doing sordid sequences for a TV show, just to prove herself and have a good career from it. Alas, the evil influence desires the old, now fake Mima, and pushes her to the point that she questions her physical existence. The scenes of her ordinary life blur with that of the television show, the sudden poor quality in colour of the animation revealed to be footage played on video on a TV screen, or dialogue linking on into a new time period or day. Even the ‘it was all a dream’ motif, infamous in some of its uses, is used repeatedly but in a powerful way as the repetition creates a nulling effect on Mima as she slowly becomes the equivalent of a walking corpse barely able to cope with the fear and misery of it all. The script by Sadayuki Muraiis is such a brilliantly simply one, structured in such a short running time, showing that this type of story is possible to do well; why it succeeds over many other films is that the others overcomplicate themselves or botch the structure of their plots. Finally viewing the original Japanese dub for the first time, what is quite a bloody pulp thriller is very carefully written, breaking its own form in the smallest of details down and subverting them. Even rape, an uncomfortable image onscreen in a film, is undermined as, when part of a recorded scene for the television show Mima is part of, she and the male actor who is playing the perpetrator interact as actors between the takes and the director says ‘Cut!’ to re-do the sequence from the beginning.

Satoshi Kon’s trademark was that the border between reality and its opposite (dreams, hallucinations, the artificial) was paper thin, melding into each other seamlessly as part of his characters’ existences. Even Tokyo Godfathers (2003), his most conventional film, has the buildings of Tokyo start dancing in their spots in the ending credits. As was the case with his work, the animation is exceptional, far from the stereotype of female characters with big eyes who look like young girls, a figure within a scene show in extreme close-up briefly showing the drastic contrast to Perfect Blue’s more realistic character designs, and full of detail in nearly every image. Kon’s trademark of the intangibility of reality is assisted by the fact that, as high quality animation, he was able to use the complete plasticity of the form, completely made from scratch, in the smallest or biggest manipulations and touches to create the world onscreen. The desperation the character Mima feels is exemplified by how, through the placing together of sequences or manipulating the content of them, it is felt through the environments around her and is influenced by her emotions. The music by Masahiro Ikumi is just as important too. Beyond the pop songs within the film’s story, his score is just as vital to creating the intensity to the scenes depicted, switching between an electronic score similar to the legendary one of Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989) and choral chanting that adds an unnerved air to the material too.

While a completely animated film, it follows through one of the basic tenements of genre cinema like this in that the worlds portrayed are reflected through the characters’ mental states. This theme has been very reoccurring in my choices for this project - Footprints On The Moon (1975), The Fall of the House of Usher (1960), Kill List (2011) (even if I felt the film was a failure), The Hands of Orlac (1924) and so on – all in very different ways and types of films but fully involving the visual and textual states of their filmic forms for the moods and atmospheres generated. Even Detention (2011), more of a comedy than horror, followed the same suit to reflect the characters’ heads filled with pop and retro culture. When Roger Corman himself, legendary producer and director of The Fall of the House of Usher (1960), described Perfect Blue as what Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock would have created if they collaborated together, it was very high praise, but his choices are also perfect for this idea even if my viewing of their films is limited. Disney, whose studio, regardless of your thoughts of them, creates new worlds or reflect ours through fantastical imagery, and Hitchcock a director who abstracted the ordinary in terrifying ways, his inherent Englishness fed between the provocations of striking tension in the audience influenced by German Expressionism (ie. The Hands of Orlac) and varying styles within the films I have seen, from Vertigo (1958) and its Technicolor melodrama to Frenzy (1972) and the grubbiness of British exploitation films that would be made through that decade. The films I have chosen, like Mima’s own realities, inextricably melded together as perfect bedfellows; even the dialogue editor for the English dub was Les Claypool III, not to be confused with the lead singer and bass player for Primus, who did the music score for The Guyver – Dark Hero (1994) too, another film I have reviewed for this season. This concept of a subconscious depth in cinema is the cinema I attach myself to the most, probably reflected as someone who for personal difficulties with a mental disability is withdrawn in new situations and is constantly in thought and daydreams when not interacting with people I am comfortable with. For me the philosophical concept of the world only existing within one’s mind and senses is a tangible concept even if there are plenty of justifiable arguments against it, and in such a world, these films which depict it as morphing, for the good and bad, depending on the protagonist(s)’s world view is a more realistic way to depict reality than actual reality many times. This type of cinema – from the Expressionistic to the Gnostic – is also a huge part of its legacy, not just in genre cinema but some of the most acclaimed (Ingmar Bergman, Jean Cocteau, even Jean-Luc Godard in his manipulations with cinematic form) and the most popular cinema (The Wizard of Oz (1939)) too.

Perfect Blue is part of a vast network of film history, and considering Satoshi Kon’s influences included cinema such as the 1972 adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-5, this was clear from the start of his (sadly) short career in hindsight. While there is nothing wrong with anime referencing other anime, as with films referencing other films in the last few decades, unless a wide array of mediums are evoked or the meanings and origins of the fellow works are used as well as their iconography, a stagnation occurs. Even Quentin Tarantino, dangerously becoming obsolete in my eyes after Kill Bill Vol. 2 (2004) and Death Proof (2007), showed himself and detractors in Inglourious Basterds (2009) that the film geek who spent his youth working in a video store still could provoke fascinating ideas about history and propaganda, beyond cinema itself, through a reinterpretation of a Enzo G. Castellari film. Tarantino’s also-rans did not follow this, and with there being more of them than him, created more mindless copies of his work than anything with depth. Satoshi Kon was only one man in a vast industry and his passing has left a huge black hole in it. The films he left however will be remembered, and while Perfect Blue plays out like the crime thriller programme Mima acts in, or even closer to the Italian giallo genre in hindsight with its obsession with questioned realities and graphic violence, the elegance of the whole anime is unrivalled compared to live action thrillers as well, its crafted nature adding a sense of art to its layering mystery and psychosis that is unforgettable. 

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