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Monday, April 14, 2008

Iron Claw the Pirate

Release Year: 1969
Country: Turkey
Starring: Demir Karahan, Yildirim Gencer, Feri Cansel, Huseyin Zan, Nebahat Cehre, Danyal Topathan, Faruk Panter, Behcet Nakar, Hakki Haktan, Muammer Gozalan, Cetin Dagpelen, Osman Karahan, Ahmet Senses
Director: Cetin Inanc
Writers: Erdogan Avci, Kamil Ersahin
Cinematographer: Rafet Siriner
Producer: Isik Toraman
Original Title: Demir Pence Korsan Adam
Availability: Buy it from Xploited Cinema.
Promote It: Digg | del.icio.us

In the course of doing my usual rigorous research in preparation for bringing you the most carefully considered review of Iron Claw the Pirate possible, I came upon some information that seemed to suggest that it was the second film in a series of Iron Claw movies. That made sense to me, because Iron Claw the Pirate is a film that seems to start in progress, without any introduction of the characters or ongoing conflicts. However, what makes sense does not always prove to be so--especially in the case of Turkish action cinema--and I later determined that I had misinterpreted that information. In fact, it was Iron Claw the Pirate that was the first film, followed immediately by its sequel, Demir Pence Casuslar Savasi. Still, the reality of the situation makes its own kind of sense, simply because that's just the way that these movies are. Any amount of exposition or character development would most likely have been seen by the makers of Iron Claw the Pirate as a waste of valuable time that could otherwise have been devoted to fist fights, shootouts, and fleshy women doing exotic dances.

Iron Claw was directed by Cetin Inanc, a man who would cement his place in film history with 1982's The Man Who Saves the World, aka Turkish Star Wars, a film that married stolen special effects footage from Star Wars with footage of graying he-man Cuneyt Arkin kicking around boulders and fighting monsters with giant paper mache heads. But long before that career milestone, Inanc got his start as an assistant to director Yilmaz Atadeniz. As most fans of Turkish pulp cinema know, Atadeniz is the inspired lunatic whose obsession with comic books and American movie serials lead to the film that would kick off the 1960s wave of Turkish costumed hero movies, Kilink Instanbul'da (Kilink in Istanbul). That film set a template that would remain largely unchanged until the Turkish superhero boom finally waned in the early seventies, a combination of the serials' nonstop two-fisted action and gee-whiz heroics with a greezy dose of S&M tinged sleaze. Inanc's first directing break came courtesy of Atadeniz, who put him in charge of his production of Kizil Mask, a remake of the Columbia serial The Phantom, based on Lee Falk's comic strip hero. Though Atadeniz later said that he regretted that decision, Inanc obviously got the hang of things by the time of making Iron Claw. In fact, the movie is so similar in every way to Atadeniz's own Casus Kiran (a remake of the Republic serial Spy Smasher), made just a year earlier, that because I watched both in quick succession, I've had to keep going back while writing this to make sure that I wasn't confusing their details.

Simply put, Iron Claw is a superhero whose superpower is shooting people. It's quite practical as superpowers go, and well suited to the fact that all of Iron Claw's opponents are just as heavily armed and trigger happy as he is--a situation that would no doubt leave Aquaman, with his ability to summon whales and seahorses, flummoxed. Despite the film's title, there's nothing really pirate-y about Iron Claw--he's very cozy with the police, for one thing--and everyone just refers to him as "Iron Claw", without the occupational appellation, or simply as Demir, which is the name of his alter ego (played by Demir Karahan, in just one of the film's examples of its cast not being trusted to respond to names that are different from their own). His costume appears to be mask optional, as sometimes he wears one and sometimes he doesn't--which is understandable, because he's a damn good looking dude. The rest of it reminds me of the space suits from Bava's Planet of the Vampires: black leather with white piping, though augmented with a weird square belt buckle with a face on it that looks like one of the blockheads from Gumby as forged by some kid in his metal shop class. Rounding out the ensemble is a whip that Iron Claw waves around when he's not just shooting everybody.

Shooting people alongside Iron Claw is his girlfriend, Mine, dressed in a similar though more revealing costume. I always think it's sweet when the Turks do this (Spy Smasher and Captain America were both given girlfriend sidekicks in their movies, too); it's as if they don't want their superheroes to get lonely--even though I know that it's really just an excuse to have a fleshy woman running around in a leather mini and thigh boots. For the first half of the movie I kept thinking of Mine as "unnamed female accomplice", because it took that long for someone to actually refer to her. Even when she'd barge into the crooks' den at Iron Claw's side and start shooting everybody in the face (seemingly the preferred target), all that the bad guys would shout was "Iron Claw!", as if she wasn't even there. Of course, exclaiming "Oh, look. It's Iron Claw and his unnamed female accomplice" might be a lot to ask of someone who's being shot in the face. Still, I noticed her at least; she looked great in her costume, and very cool alongside Iron Claw as the two of them sped along on their twin motorcycles. Not even Iron Claw ends up giving her much respect, though, since at one point he beds a sexy enemy agent to the accompaniment of drunken saxophone music (all part of the job, of course) and doesn't seem to think twice about lying to her about it.

As far as I can tell, the character of Iron Claw is an original, if somewhat generic, creation. But lest you should begin to think that Iron Claw the Pirate is a Turkish action film that's completely free of flagrant copyright violations, let me point out that its villain is none other than that dastardly French import Fantomas. This was not the first time that Fantomas had made an appearance in Turkish cinema--he headlined Fantomas: Appointment in Istanbul in 1967, and would go on to face off against Superman in 1969's Supermen Fantom'ya Karsi--and the choice of him as a villain was no doubt inspired by the success of the Kilink movies. Given that, its a very good one as choices go, because Fantomas is the very seed from which Kilink ultimately sprouted. Created in the early years of the last century by French pulp novelists Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain, the masked criminal genius would go on to be a durable fixture in European pop culture, featured in everything from comics to movies to television, and would ultimately be the inspiration for the comic character Diabolik, who would in turn inspire imitations in the form of Kriminal and Kilink, who again in turn would be translated by the aforementioned Yilmaz Atadeniz into the skeleton-garbed evil mastermind Kilink. (Fantomas would even, like Kilink's inspiration Killing, be the subject of his own photo comic during the early sixties.)

Fantomas himself would go through many incarnations in his lifetime, but it appears to me that the version on view in Iron Claw is based on the one seen in the 1960s series of Fantomas movies directed by Andre Hunebelle. Those films cast the actor Jean Marais in a double role as both Fantomas and as his arch enemy, the reporter Fandor--and in an interesting interpretation of that, Iron Claw fits Fantomas with a reporter alter ego. Iron Claw seems also to be going for Fantomas' general look from those films, specifically the head-enveloping, skintight blue mask that obscures all of his features but his eyes. Only in Iron Claw's case that is accomplished by means of the actor wearing a black ski mask and having all of his visible features, including his ears, darkened with bootblack. Regardless of lineage, however, Iron Claw's Fantomas is clearly a villain in the Kilink mode, slapping around women (and worse) while calling them "honey" and "baby", and having no qualms about thinning his own HR pool by blowing away underperforming minions at the drop of a hat.

And speaking of Kilink, also on hand is the man himself, Yildrim Gencer--only in this rare instance he's not playing the masked villain, but rather a two-fisted secret agent (named "Yildrim", of course) who fights alongside Iron Claw in his battle against Fantomas. I had heard ugly rumors that Gencer had on occasion stepped away from his evil-doing duties and played on the side of right, and I'm happy to report that he here makes a very dashing hero--though, needless to say, a brooding one who's always dressed in black. As demonstrated by the Kilink films, Gencer wasn't one to shy from rough and tumble stunt work (not that I imagine much of a choice existed for the actors who wanted to appear in these movies), and the teaming of him with the equally game Demir Karahan makes for some especially kinetic set pieces. Also in Gencer's favor is his mustache, which is possessed of exactly the level of gravity and presence that you'd want in a mustache worn by a brooding, black clad action hero; it's just a shame that he and Maurizio Merli never met onscreen to pit those two noble beasts against one another in a steely-eyed, musk- drunken 'stache-off.

As I mentioned earlier, the plot of Iron Claw the Pirate joins us in progress, with Fantomas vowing to come to Turkey to take "revenge" for something or other that we, the audience, are never made privy to. He also says something about settling things with Iron Claw personally, which is weird, because once he's in Turkey, he doesn't appear to have any idea who Iron Claw is. Next we are shown Iron Claw being handed a revolver and holster by someone off-screen, after which Iron Claw also vows to take revenge for something that isn't at all alluded to. Then Fantomas arrives in Istanbul and meets with the agents who have been doing his dirty work in his absence. These include Cancel (Feri Cansel) a sexy spy/exotic dancer, and Behcet (Behcet Nakar), a big guy with muttonchops who wears a leopard print fur hat and, inexplicably, what looks to be a steel oven mitt. Behcet, aside from being an edgy dresser, has a gift for letting fly with exactly the type of colorful oaths that we'd like to think we can count on from the Turks, like when he says of Iron Claw, "I'll make him spit out his mother's milk".

Fantomas' first order of business is to consolidate all of the enemy agents in Turkey under his power, and so a meeting is called. Because Iron Claw and Mine have a comedy relief sidekick called "The Uncle" who works undercover as a janitor at the strip club where Fantomas' men meet to discuss all of their plans (a fact which, once established, relieves the movie of ever having to provide any explanation for why Iron Claw is able to show up wherever Fantomas and his men are every single time), the masked heroes find out about the meeting and barge in, guns blazing. During the ensuing melee, Iron Claw's policeman pal Yilmaz is mortally wounded. A tear-filled death scene follows that would probably be really poignant if we hadn't just met Yilmaz about thirty seconds ago. After that, Yilmaz's brother--i.e Yildrim, the brooding secret agent--comes to town looking for payback and, after a really confusing scene in which he and The Uncle both appear to be pretending to be agents of Fantomas, is granted an introduction to Iron Claw and Mine. The three then agree to join forces to take Fantomas and his gang down.

Like the old serials that inspired them, these films offer a pretty set and predictable range of motivations for their villains, and here what Fantomas is after is a certain professor who has in his possession a microfilm containing something that it was apparently determined wasn't worth mentioning to the audience--and who also, predictably, has a beautiful young daughter. Unlike in those old serials, however, Fantomas ends up shooting that kindly old professor to death and then slaughtering his daughter on a sacrificial altar, so chalk one up for unpredictability. Before that can happen, however, we have scenes in which Fantomas' gang must hoodwink the local mafia in order to get their hands on the professor, which leads to much shooting of people, and then a series of scenes in which Iron Claw, Mine and Yildrim attempt to rescue the professor and his daughter, which leads to even more shooting of people, especially in the face.

Beyond the whole microfilm thing, Fantomas doesn't really appear to have any one grand plan, like blowing up the moon, or making the world's gold supply smell like cheese. He more seems to have his hand in a lot of different pots, happy to stir up trouble for the Turkish people in whatever way he can. At one point he's showing off a weapons factory, then some kind of superboat that he's constructing, and then there's something that involves all kinds of boxes of TNT that he's having shipped in. It was definitely wise for him to diversify in this manner, because Iron Claw and his crew invariably show up to foil whatever evil project he's most recently announced. Because of that we don't ever get to see any of these schemes that Fantomas has been crowing about come to fruition, which made me wonder why, given that it wouldn't have impacted the film's budget in the least, the filmmakers didn't have him aim higher. After all, it doesn't cost anything to have your villain just talk about blowing up the moon. And, to give credit where credit is due, the actor who played Fantomas was really good at talking up those plans, employing a dynamic repertoire of stylized hand gestures the likes of which have not been seen since Spectreman's Dr. Gori.

Like other Turkish movies of the period, Iron Claw the Pirate was made without recourse to even the most primitive optical effects. (To put it in perspective, the documentary included with the DVD mentions how Inanc wowed the Turkish film industry in the early 1970s with his pioneering use of slow motion.) The titles are printed on cards, and a scene in which Fantomas and his gang address their Turkish counterparts via a two-way TV screen is accomplished by having the actors stand behind a facade with a screen-shaped hole cut in it. Likewise, the visual style is for the most part unadorned, with the camera simply struggling to capture the scope and velocity of all of the action that's taking place. This makes moments of inventiveness stick out all the more when they occur, as does one particularly clever shot in which a long downward pan appears to show simultaneous action occurring on several different levels of a house at once. A similar technique is used for a strange, wordless scene in which Fantomas rides a lift up the face of that same structure--a scene that struck me as having a vaguely French new wave feel to it, like something out of Alphaville. Often these films, because of the crudity of their execution and the datedness of their influences, can seem as if they're suspended in some kind of alternate reality--until moments like these remind you otherwise, and you realize that the players in the then still young Turkish film industry were eagerly studying the world cinematic landscape for techniques and elements of style that they could experiment with.

Alongside their other obvious, albeit ramshackle, charms, Turkish costumed adventure pictures like Iron Claw can hit a nostalgic nerve for those of us whose childhoods included our own backyard superhero epics made with the family camcorder of super 8. Despite some niftier costumes, and the fact that their stars were actually old enough to drive, in a lot of cases the production values aren't that far beyond what a bunch of kids with some imagination and a few summer afternoons to kill could cook up. In the case of Iron Claw, for instance, Fantomas' haunted house HQ consists of a sheet with and "F" stenciled on it, some carpet remnants, and not a whole lot else. As with those home movie epics, however, what Iron Claw lacks in resources, it makes up for in enthusiasm, and when its time for a fight scene, the actors go at it with all the hyperactive vigor of a bunch of eight year olds hopped up on sugar and Ultraman reruns. Completing the picture is the ADD-like inattention to the intricacies of plot, which by means of its impatience renders the story little more than a thin and cursory connective tissue between those fight scenes. All of these factors combine with the paradoxical result of imbuing films which are the product of an industry that was no doubt about as mercenary and cutthroat as they come with a winning innocence, even as those films are actively trying to counter that innocence with another scene of sadism or tawdry burlesque.

While it's not the purpose of Teleport City to serve as a DVD buyer's guide, I did want to point out before closing that, of the Turkish films of its vintage so far released by Onar Films, Iron Claw the Pirate is one of the better looking ones; though the picture is still soft, it's largely free of the severe print damage that marred the first two Kilink pictures. Of course, seeing as no efforts were ever made to preserve these films, we're lucky to be able to see them in any condition, but it's nice nonetheless when you're able to watch one without the effect of doing so through a sheet of grimy cellophane. I'd also like to thank Onar for making these films available for us to see, because I doubt anyone is getting rich off of releasing titles like Casus Kiran and 3 Dev Adam, and the least we can do is let them know we appreciate it (oh, and also buy the damn things).

For myself, I would like to believe that watching Iron Claw the Pirate enriched my life in some imperceptible--if perhaps stupid--way, even though it really just represents another ninety minutes of my life spent watching grown men in masks punching and shooting one another. At the very least, my wealth of experience in that one particular and very limited activity allows me to say with authority that Iron Claw the Pirate is indeed a very good ninety minutes of grown men in masks punching and shooting one another. Of course, that is as it should be, since the industry it was a product of seems to have taken as its primary mission the refining of such films down to their purest and most pleasurable elements.

Labels: Action: Superheroes, Country: Turkey, Year: 1969

posted by Todd at 9:49 PM | 0 Comments

Saturday, September 18, 2004

The Oblong Box

1969, United States. Starring Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Alister Williamson, Peter Arne, Hilary Dwyer, Rupert Davies, Uta Levka, Sally Geeson, Maxwell Shaw, Carl Rigg, Harry Baird. Directed by Gordon Hessler. Available on DVD from Amazon

Hessler and Price are together again (for the first time) for a Poe adaptation that actually has a little something to do with Poe, or at least as much as any AIP Poe film has to do with Poe. Poe's short story, "The Oblong Box," has to do with a man who witnesses the obsession of an artist friend on a ship with an oblong shipping crate. So committed is the man, seeming delirious and mad, to this box that when the ship is wrecked during a storm, he sinks to the bottom of the ocean with the box rather than abandon it. Not to spoil the surprise, but it was a coffin containing his dead wife, though no one knew of the contents lest they refuse to travel overseas with a corpse. Hessler's film does indeed contain a coffin that is referred to as an oblong box. And there is an artist, though he himself has no coffin. Beyond that, and this film has as much to do with Poe as does the average movie in which someone inherits a wily, diaper-wearing ape that solves a crime.

Vincent Price stars as Sir Julian Markham, a wealthy member of the British gentry who we first meet in Africa as his brother, Edward, is strung up and disfigured in a voodoo ritual for some horrible transgression he has committed against the native peoples. Upon their return home, Edward's sanity deteriorates and Julian must keep his mad, hideous brother locked in an upstairs room while Julian himself attempts to lead a normal life with his bride-to-be, Elizabeth (Hilary Dwyer, once again). Edward, though losing his mind, is scheming with the family lawyer, Trench, to fake his own death using more voodoo so that he can be free of the confines in which his brother has placed him. Nothing goes as planned, however, and rather than being freed, Edward ends up buried alive and abandoned by Trench. Luckily for Edward, his grave is robbed by body snatchers working for the local surgeon, Dr. Neuharrt (none other than Christopher Lee), who is always in need of fresh cadavers for his experiments. Edward vows revenge on those who left him to die in the grave, just as he vows to find a black magic cure for his affliction and the truth behind why he was disfigured in the first place.

Hessler, working with a script from frequent AIP writers Lawrence Huntington and Christopher Wicking, has crafted a complex tale with multiple plot points that must be woven together. It's ambitious for a horror film and for AIP to launch into such a labyrinthine narrative, doubly so when it is injected with all the civil rights politics that surround the movie's African prologue. The Markhams are plantation owners in Africa, keeping a host of slaves. Upon his return from the so-called Dark Continent, Julian seems to have had some sort of social and racial awakening and comments on the evils committed by the white man in Africa. Horror and science fiction films have often been at the forefront of tackling tough social and political issues in the guise of a tale about some monster or invading aliens. Throughout the 1950s, much of the rhetoric was decidedly one-sided and conservative, motivated as it was by the Cold War and Red Scare. The Oblong Box is a product of its time, the late 1960s, and reflects a more liberal and open-minded view of race and the need to own up to the atrocities committed during the colonial era - which, remember, had really only ended twenty or twenty-five years earlier - and then only to pass from colonialism by a nation-state to a sort of pseudo-colonialism perpetrated by large businesses. The Oblong Box' more progressive politics are similar, then to the same director's more liberal take on good versus evil, Christianity versus Paganism in Cry of the Banshee.

Of course, it's still an AIP gothic horror film, so whatever politics may be on offer are wrapped in a tale about a disfigured madman coving his face with a crimson mask as he slits the throats of those who wronged him. And now that you mention it, why yes there is a scene of drunken, bawdy revelry in a lower class inn where people wave beer mugs about and buxom wenches dance on the tables and have their bosoms revealed. After all, AIP knows what people want, and people want buxom wenches dancing on tables. AIP's gothic "Poe" films are often compared to Hammer Studio's gothic films, which obvious influence heavily the look of AIP's films. Those comparisons were bound to get more common in the late 60s, early 1970s when the two studios teamed up for the first time in what would seem to be an obvious good match. The result was Hammer's superior vampire film, The Vampire Lovers, the first in the Karnstein vampire trilogy (which continued with the vastly inferior Lust for a Vampire and wonderful Twins of Evil) and the first Hammer film to feature nudity. Apparently someone at AIP told the reserved Brits that hey, it's the 1970s and it's okay to show some boobs.

AIP, for their part, found themselves with the services of Hammer legend Christopher Lee, and it doesn't take a genius to know that the first thing they should do with the man is team him up with Vincent Price. Unfortunately, AIP seemed lost as to exactly how to use Lee, and so this screen pairing of two of the great icons of horror is more an exercise is wasted opportunity than it is the celebration and masterpiece it should be. Lee's doctor possesses very little character. We know he pays to have corpses delivered to him so he can expand his craft, but considering the fact that just about every doctor in a gothic horror movie does the same, that's hardly a defining characteristic. All in all, he's very dull despite Lee bringing his usual air of authoritative dignity to the role. What's worse, however, is that he and Price have only a single scene together, at the very end of the film, and it lasts for but a few brief seconds. Really, now! Why put Lee and Price together in a film then not put them together in the film? Lee is wasted in a throw-away role, and the film fails utterly to capitalize on this historic meeting of horror superstars. Or lack of meeting, I suppose I should say.

The film's other major mistake is ever bothering to show Sir Edward's horrible disfigurement. I mean, I know they have to do the big reveal in the final showdown between he and Julian, but the result is decidedly less than it should be. When you build a character up throughout the entire film as being the very picture of nightmarish terror, you have to come up with something better than some oatmeal on the cheek and a silly piggy nose. He looks like the doctor in that episode of The Twilight Zone where the beautiful woman thinks she is ugly because she doesn't have a wretched piggy face. Up until this point, the crimson mask has been effective and even a bit eerie. It winds up being much more frightening than the face beneath it despite attempts at the contrary. I guess it's the old Lovecraft conundrum, meaning that any adaptation of an H.P. Lovecraft tale is doomed to failure because his stories revolve around beings so absolutely horrifying that simply looking at them will drive the sanest man completely mad. There's no way to adequately realize that on screen, and so film adaptations are inevitably letdowns when the monster makes its appearance. Likewise for Edward's monstrous face. The film would have been better off to never show it. Cry of the Banshee was wise enough to never show the werewolf creature in its entirety, because it knew it looked silly. Wrapped in shadows, it was rather effective, however, and The Oblong Box should have kept Edward's face a mystery.

The Oblong Box has some other problems, as most of AIP's post-Roger Corman films tended to have. It's a very talky movie, though unlike Cry of the Banshee, the conversation is more interesting if for no other reason than much of it involves Vincent Price. This is one of the more subdued films in the AIP gothic horror canon. The murders are directed with style and are fairly tame by the standards set in other films. There's blood, sure, but not much blood, and the camera lingers only slightly over the carnage. In addition, there are no torture scenes and, excepting one would-be robber-prostitute, the women of the film are mercifully free from the cruelty being perpetrated.

Hessler's direction, like much of the film, is reserved. Maybe even a tad uninspired though perfectly competent. His biggest problem, as it would be in many of his AIP horror films, is the pace. The Oblong Box has several good moments. No great ones, but plenty to satisfy. Unfortunately the stretch between those moments seems much longer than it is or should be. There is also a fair amount of padding, more than one would want in a film that runs just over ninety minutes. The bawdy alehouse sequence goes on for too long, and conversations seem to drag on for a few minutes more than they need to. There are very few surprises in the film, so watching the lead-up get drawn out "in anticipation" is irritating at times. That said, the twist ending and revelation, though also not exactly a surprise by the time you get to it, is still effective. Though it has nothing to do with Poe, Poe probably would have approved.

Both Price and Lee give good performances, but both of them also seem to betray a certain lack of enthusiasm. Price, in particular, is uncharacteristically subdued, playing as he is the more or less "straight" man. But it's not his fault. His character, like Lee's is given very little of interest to do. His job consists mostly of syrupy "let's begin our lives anew" scenes with his wife-to-be or moderately aghast, "but surely that can't be!" scenes that are never as urgent as they should be. Hessler simply can't sustain the film through the doldrums, where as a director like Hammer's Terence Fisher could make down-time in his films every bit as interesting as the parts where Peter Cushing was driving a stake through someone's heart. There is no real tension in the film.

With Lee is a tiny role and Price confined to looking forlorn in his country estate, the bulk of the film's action falls onto the shoulders of Alistair Williamson as Sir Edward. And since he spends most of the movie with a bag over his head, it's difficult to connect with him. The best scene involves his being taken awkwardly by two friendly drunks to the local brothel for the aforementioned rowdy alehouse scene that every AIP film had to have. It's a moment of humor in an otherwise humorless film. I didn't realize that so many beautiful women would be so willing to bed a guy walking around with a red sack over his face. Maybe it's worth trying sometime. Williamson, like Lee, appeared in a number of Hammer productions including The Evil of Frankenstein, Curse of the Werewolf, and The Gorgon. He also went on to a smaller role alongside Vincent Price in The Abominable Dr. Phibes. His character in The Oblong Box, like the movie itself, is too reserved to be fully effective. He manages to be a charmer even with a hood covering his wicked voodoo face, but his fits of homicidal rage are not effectively actualized. He ends up being rather dull for a hooded maniac suffering a voodoo curse.

As you know by now, I have a soft spot for gothic horror films from this era of filmmaking, as well as for anything with Vincent Price. The Oblong Box is certainly not the zenith of his collaboration with AIP for the Poe cycle. That came in movies like Masque of the Red Death, Haunted Palace, and The Conqueror Worm (aka The Witchfinder General). Compared to those, The Oblong Box and Price's other outings with Hessler definitely fall well into the range of "lesser" works. That said, The Oblong Box is not without its charm. Price's character is complex even though he's more reserved that usual, and the revelation about what happened to him and his brother in Africa is a nice twist that makes the film's criticism of colonialism and racism something more intelligent than a simple black and white (if you'll excuse me) morality call. For most of the film, Julian is a likable character, though his willingness to snatch a body in order to hide the fact at a funeral that his brother was turned into a creature hints at a darker tendency that is further exposed in the film's excellent (minus the pigface make-up for Edward) finale.

The supporting cast buoyed by Peter Arne (Khartoum, Murders in the Rue Morgue, Straw Dogs) as Trench is solid, and the music is effective. Set design and art direction is also typically good. AIP may not have been quite as good at this stuff as Hammer, but they were no slouches, and everything looks authentic and gorgeous. These positive elements conspire with my innate love of these kinds of movies to push The Oblong Box just into the lower end of my "like it" column. Seasoned fans and completists like myself will roll with the film's slower portions and appreciate the positive aspects. It's certainly not the first AIP gothic horror film I'd recommend, nor the first Vincent Price film. It's not a film about which one should get especially excited, but I certainly didn't mind spending some time with it.

Labels: Director: Gordon Hessler, Horror: Poe, Netflix Diary, Stars: Vincent Price, Studio: AIP, Year: 1969

posted by Keith at 11:34 PM | 0 Comments

Friday, September 10, 2004

Bloody Territories

1969, Japan. Starring Tsuneo Aoki, Rika Fujie, Tatsuya Fuji, Keiko Hara, Ryoji Hayama, Masako Izumi, Akira Kobayashi, Hiroko Machida. Directed by Yasuharu Hasebe. Available on DVD from Amazon.)

For a long time, yakuza films were the big missing piece of puzzle that is Japanese film in America. In the years before DVD, you could find any number of groovy Japanese monster movies. Sure, they were pan and scan and dubbed, but few people thought to be offended by such things at the time because we were simply happy to be watching Godzilla or Yog or any other creature smashing up the place. Samurai movies were a bit scarcer, but at least they were represented by a smattering of titles. Yakuza films were a vast and largely untapped reservoir just waiting to be unleashed on American fans who had perhaps read about the films, or knew people in Japan who had seen them, but had otherwise been limited to little more than tantalizing photos in magazines and stories about movies in which guys screamed a lot and cut off their pinky fingers.

In the past year or so, all that has changed. Well, I reckon it started a little bit before that when someone decided to release a fistful of Seijun Suzuki films on VHS. Then in the past year, HVe and American Cinemathique really opened the floodgates and started pushing yakuza films into the forefront. And while certain notable titles remain MIA (the Battles Without Honor and Humanity series, the Abashiri Prison series, and frankly, most of the great old Takakura Ken films that started the craze back in the 50s and 60s), we're certainly a hell of a lot better off now that we can walk into any old video store and pick up a copy of Blackmail is My Life, Underworld Beauty, or the movie on the chopping block right now, Yasuharu Hasebe's 1969 yakuza thriller, Bloody Territories.

I first discovered Hasebe when I picked up the film Black Tight Killers, a movie in which sexy female assassins in a vast array of showy mod outfits do things like fling deadly razor-sharp 7-inch records. It was really my kind of movie. Hasebe, I'm told, learned his craft from the master of pop-art yakuza madness, Seijun Suzuki, and the influence of Japan's number one maverick certainly showed in Black Tight Killers. By 1969, however, much of the eye-catching weirdness seems to have left the work of Hasebe, and while Bloody Territories is not a bad film, it's also nothing special, certainly not as special, quirky, or weird as you would hope from the man that gave us Black Tight Killers. It is just a yakuza film. Well, no. Maybe it's not just a yakuza film, but with Kinji Fukasaku just over the horizon, Bloody Territories is simply the kind of movie that gets lost in the shuffle even if it has a few interesting thematic twists.

The deconstruction of the yakuza genre that had been built up in the films of Takakura Ken began with Seijun Suzuki's gleefully cracked subversion of the genre, but he was just so out there that a lot of people didn't even realize exactly what was happening. In 1967, Junya Sato made what many consider to be the first "modern" yakuza film, that is to say, a film in which the noble notions of honor and righteousness that characterized the Takakura Ken films were completely trashed, and the yakuza were depicted mainly as a bunch of ruthless, opportunistic thugs with no sense of honor and no flare for the romantic. Hasebe's Bloody Territories falls somewhere short of Sato's Organized Violence when it comes to its depiction of the yakuza. The core characters still cling to the old values and traditions of loyalty and honor, but it's obvious they live in a world that has abandoned such ideals. The twist Bloody Territories brings to the table isn't that the other yakuza have become dishonorable and sleazy; it's that the yakuza are bested at their own game by businessmen, who are every bit as ruthless and far more effective, it turns out, at running things.

The action revolves around the number two and number three man in the Onogi Clan, a renegade yakuza gang that refuses to dissolve their organization during a big pow wow where everyone else agrees to disband. The Onogi Clan, it seems, spends as much time cleaning up the streets and serving as a sort of neighborhood watch as they spend engaging in the usual activities that occupy the average yakuza's day. In fact, as the credits roll we are treated to a montage of Onogi gangsters prowling the streets, protecting young ladies who are getting harassed, taking care of drunks who mess stuff up, and other small-time disturbances they don't want going on in their turf. The Onogis are never the less disturbed by the fact that these random acts are even occurring. It never used to be like that. Turns out another big gang from out of town is attempting to muscle in on Onogi turf now that they know the Onogis have no larger organization supporting them.

Proud though they may be, the Onogis know their small neighborhood group can't take on the entire Kansai region syndicate. They seek the help of old friends who have now entered into legitimate business to mediate a truce, though the price of mediation bankrupts the clan since they'd never measured their success in terms of money, but rather through their acquisition of turf, order, and respect. This newfangled obsession with money instead of "face" is simply outside the realm in which the Onogi operate. Before too long, they realize that they've been had, and while they were worrying about rival yakuza, what they should have been watching out for was the big corporation - a gang in its own right, but one with loyalties not to any single boss but instead simply to the practice of making a profit.

The central characters are Onogi's number two (Seichi) and number three (Yuji, played by Akira Kobayashi, who starred in Suzuki's Kanto Wanderer, Hasebe's Black Tight Killers, and later a couple of Kinji Fukasaku's Battles Without Honor and Humanity films). Seichi is the cool one, collected and smart and basically the man who will take control of the gang when the current boss retires. Yuiji is smart as well, but a bit more of a hothead who is quicker to call for retribution even when he knows it'll be certain death. Seichi is confident that they can figure a way out of the predicament without all having to die in a valiant last stand in the name of old school honor. Yuiji figures they're stuck in a no-win situation and might as well go out in defense of their out-of-date principles and notions of honor. Their opposite, at least for a while, is the underboss of the Kansai gang, a man who first sets out to destroy the Onogis and take over their territory until he himself finds out that even his larger gang is simply a pawn of big business. Although at war with the Onogis, he finds himself standing alongside Yuiji and Seichi in defense of the old ways.

The conflict's shift from rival yakuza gangs to the entire concept of what it was to be a yakuza versus the amoral profit-motivated aggressiveness of big business provides Bloody Territories with the twist that keeps it from being dismissible as "just another yakuza film" and situates it as a nice bridge between the Takakura Ken films, which celebrate the morals and ideals upheld by Onogi gangsters, and the Kinji Fukasaku films in which we see the erosion and breakdown of the yakuza code. But remember, these are still knife wielding killer businessmen, not just guys who throw around a lot of business buzzwords. However, I doubt the yakuza would fare any better if pitted against an adversary who, instead of simply meeting them in the back alley for a fight, insisted instead on setting up a meeting to discuss enterprise-wide paradigm shifts in how the yakuza implement robust solutions for end user clients. And oh yeah, they intend to tear down your quaint neighborhood tea house and gang headquarters and replace it with a TGI Friday's. Try being a tough yakuza hitman when you're forced to have meetings in the rumpus room of a TGI Fridays while a peppy suspenders-wearing guy named Stevie brings you jalapeno poppers. You can't kill people while eating jalapeno poppers!

Although the film takes a while to get going, once it does the twists are entertaining and the action is appropriately bloody. As if to underscore the position of the Onogi boys as die-hard old schoolers, they eschew the use of guns and favor the good ol' tanto knives - probably more realistic than showing a bunch of gangsters sporting heavy duty firepower since firearms are harder to come by (not to mention get away with using) than blades.

Hasebe's direction lacks the flare one would expect from him. This must have been his "normal" movie on the road from Black Tight Killers to Spectreman. Bloody Territories is still vividly colorful, especially when yakuza thugs get to have knife fights amid flowing white sheets of laundry, but there's a certain something missing that keeps the film from being as visually innovative as it should be. I am thankful for the fact that they're still using tripods and dollies for the shots. The 1970s would usher in the era of wildly shaking "heat of the action" shots that can really make an old man's head hurt. And oh yeah -- this being a Nikkatsu production (the studio who would later become to pinky violent and softcore porn films what Britain's Hammer was to horror), there are a couple gratuitous boob shots and weirdly out-of-place and completely frivolous "sweat-dripping lesbians" scene. As always, we welcome such utterly throw-away and inexcusable forays into cheap and tawdry titillation. If only every movie ever made would cut away to a minute or two of wet, dripping, naked lesbians naking out for no reason!

The script also lacks flare as it dutifully covers all the yakuza film points from the loving wife whose man is killed, to the guy who has to chop off a pinky as atonement for some offense. And of course there is gambling and lots of sitting around in a teahouse engaging in boisterous talk. Aside from our three central yakuza, there are very few characters worth remembering. A former yakuza torn between his respect for the old ways and his position as a top employee at the corporation and the mistress of the head of the Kansai gang show promise as two more interesting characters, but their stories are either too spottily covered or simply seem to get lost and remain undeveloped amid the sundry plot threads that have to be tied up by the film's rain-and-blood soaked finale. No one is as cool as Takakura Ken from the old films or Bunta Sugawara from the Fukasaku films that would follow. Akira Kobayashi is a good central character, but even the central characters lack anything that really makes them stand out. Although the movie's plot pitting old-fashioned yakuza against corporate greed and corruption is a unique take on the genre, none of the characters are anything out of the ordinary for such a film. There's cool and reserved guy, medium hothead, guy in floppy hat, so on and so forth. It simply doesn't give us enough that's new and different from what we'd seen beforehand, resulting in a film that isn't a must-see but is instead one of those, "See it if you get the chance" films that don't really demand any sense or urgency.

Even with so-so characters and a script that could use some tightening in places, Bloody Territories remains a good film. Just not a great one. It's an interesting transition piece, but with Hasebe directing, one tends to expect more. Still, I'm just thankful to have so many yakuza films from which to chose now, and even a rather average one like this is still a treat.

Labels: Action: Yakuza, Country: Japan, Director: Yasuharu Hasebe, Netflix Diary, Year: 1969

posted by Keith at 7:05 PM | 0 Comments

Thursday, January 17, 2002

Godzilla's Revenge

1969, Japan. Starring Kenji Sahara, Machiko Naka, Tomonori Yazaki, Eisei Amamoto, Sachio Sakai, Kazuo Suzuki, Ikio Sawamura, Shigeki Ishida, Yutaka Sada, Chotaro Togin, Yutaka Nakayama, Yoshifumi Tajima, Little Man Machan, Haruo Nakajima, Hiroshi Sekita, Midori Uchiyama. Directed by Inoshiro Honda. Buy it from Amazon.

In the end of the film Seven, Morgan Freeman utters the line "Ernest Hemingway said, 'The world is a beautiful place and worth fighting for.' I believe in the second part," or something like that. I haven't seen the movie in a long time. Anyway, whatever the exact words may be, I feel the same way about Godzilla's Revenge, easily the most hated and misunderstood of all Godzilla films.

Before I get into my analysis of exactly why it is so many people hate this film with a passion generally best directed toward loving Suzanna Hoffs, and why the people who hate this film simply, in the words of Vince McMahon, "don't get it," we should set up some sort of context both historical and personal, because baby you know that, much like Herman Melville, I do love me some digressin'.

I am breaking little new ground when I point out that the original 1954 film Godzilla was a serious sci-fi horror film that is taken seriously by serious critics (seriously!), even the more annoying ones who usually refuse to give genre films the time of day. Few people would argue that it was a cinematic milestone, that it was to the crossover scifi/horror film what Citizen Kane was to movies about grumpy newspaper moguls and what Pee-wee's Big Adventure was to the road trip film. Whatever the franchise may have become, Godzilla's contribution to film history was as big as the monster itself, and not even Michael Medved will argue that one. Or maybe he will. I don't really know him personally, so I can't account for him.

Any movie that big will get a sequel, whether it wants or needs one or not. Or so it was back then. A movie had to be a success before it could get a sequel. I don't know what has gone wrong these days that allows there to be theatrically released sequels to movies like The Flintstones and Problem Child, but then again, who am I to second guess the business strategy of Satan? Anyway, they made the sequel and it was pretty forgettable, but by the third film, they struck franchise gold and the Godzilla industry was born, along with thousands of American tourists going to Japan and shouting "Oh no! Is Godzilla!" and thinking they are the first ones to think of doing that. What will you cards think of next!?!

Over the years, Godzilla underwent a series of evolutionary steps, most of them fostered by either ideological trends or, more realistically, the desire to make even more money off the monster. The long and winding road eventually transformed him from menacing destructive force to toe-tappin', jig-dancin' superhero good guy. To put it in terms comic book readers can understand, he went from the dark spooky Batman to the Adam West Batman. Curiously enough, I always liked the Adam West Batman, just as I always liked the goofball heroic Godzilla. I could just imagine Godzilla turning to his trusty boy wonder of a sidekick, Angilas, and calling him "Old chum."

Like many children of the 1970s, I grew up watching dubbed imports of Godzilla's many adventures, though unlike many children of the 1970s, I never grew out of the films, just like I never grew out of toys or messy sticky-up hair. My love for Godzilla, and my understanding of the movies, only grew as I tacked on year after year. And when I was but a wee sprout toiling in the fields, I found myself most attracted to a little gem called Godzilla's Revenge. I absolutely loved the film. I mean, here was a movie that showed me if a kid is psychotic enough, he can travel to Monster Island, hang with monsters, and defeat criminals. Here was a movie that taught me the valuable lesson about dealing with your problems by resorting immediately to physical violence. During recess in school, we'd all run out to the playground and decide whether or not we were going to play Star Wars or Godzilla. When it was Star Wars, I was Chewbacca, albeit it a rather short version and without so much hair, the cool Sergio Leone bandoleer, and the laser crossbow (what was up with that thing anyway?). If we played Godzilla, I wanted to be Minya.

Yes, Minya. Godzilla's chubby proto-Cartman of an adopted son. Minya, the most despised of all Godzilla monsters ever. I remember running around pretending to blow atomic smoke rings, then insisting that my friend who was pretending to be Gabera let me beat them up so we could accurately recreate scenes from the movie. I remember lining up Shogun Warriors and knocking them down, gleefully ignorant of how valuable they would eventually become.

In this lies the greatest power of Godzilla's Revenge, as well as the thing people most often just don't get about it and Minya. It's a movie for children, with a character for children. I've said it before, but it bears saying again: nothing annoys me more than twenty-five year old scifi nerds complaining about how goofy and childish Godzilla's Revenge is. Well, no shit, Spock, it's a goddamned children's movie. What the hell did you expect? It's like this annoying wannabe gangster rap guy who has this shitty show on Manhattan public access cable where he reviews video games and steals wrestling news from various websites and passes it off as his own stuff. I remember watching one episode (don't ask why) where he was playing "Yoshi's Revenge" or some game like that and complaining about how childish it was and how it wasn't a good game for extreme gamers like himself. What the hell do you want from a child's game?

I don't really know what these people's problem is, and I'm no armchair psychologist so I'd rather not speculate, but it seems to all boil down to a desperate need to have one's childish interests and hobbies justified as serious adult pursuits. Thus things like the "comics aren't just for kids" campaign, or the demand that movies about a giant lizard knocking over major metropolitan areas be darker and more adult oriented. Well you know what? Godzilla movies are childish. Reading comic books is childish. Being a grown man who dresses up as Sailor Moon is both childish and disturbing, but you know what? That doesn't make any of these things wrong or unenjoyable.

Face it -- adult stuff sucks. Adult stuff is paying taxes and watching Ally McBeal. Adult stuff is trying to get a mortgage, listening to adult contemporary music, and going to see Italian films that don't star Steeve Reeves. Childish stuff is listening to snotty punk rock, reading comics, talking about Star Trek, going to goofy conventions, wearing costumes, playing with dolls, and being open to learning new things. Being childish does not mean being irresponsible, but it sure beats being mature. Being childish is stealing a sneak peek at porn, hiding a copy Penthouse inside a copy of Dragon magazine so you can look at it in the Waldenbooks mall store. Yeah, you can laugh, but you all did it too. Being childish is loving what you love without shame, no matter how society may frown upon or disapprove of your passion. Being childish is going through life wide-eyed and amazed, unhindered by societal hang-ups about how one race shouldn't get along with another, one age group shouldn't like the same things as another. As an adult, I look at people around me and, despite my rather open-minded, liberal view of all things social, I still see blacks, whites, Asians, whatever. I still see men, women, gays, lesbians, heteros. I don't discriminate or disapprove, but I still see categories far more often than I see people.

As a child, I remember growing up watching Ultraman and Godzilla films, playing with Shogun Warriors and pretending I was Jason in Battle of the Planets. At the time, I didn't buy Japanese toys; I bought toys. I didn't watch Japanese movies; I just watched movies. I didn't have friends who were Japanese, Chinese, white, black, Mexican, boy or girl; I just had friends. Never once did it occur to me that I should not relate to these people because they were different from me, because not once did it occur to me that these people were all that different. Sure, we ate different things, were different colors, but what did that really matter? We liked a lot of the same things and had fun together. It wasn't until I began my journey to adulthood that I was taught lessons about alienating others because of their race, culture, gender, what have you. It wasn't until later that I was told I couldn't possibly relate to Ultraman, because those were Japanese actors and not Caucasian ones. It wasn't until adulthood that passion about learning, about having fun, and about doing things that made me happy became taboo and shameful.

Being childish is a wonderful thing, something adults don't do enough of except for the part about whining and crying about not getting your way. For some reason, everyone seems happy to maintain that aspect of childishness in their adult life, but they leave behind, and even scoff at the wonder, curiosity, and willingness to experiment and learn. I have no reservations about being childish. If I'm drenched in a sudden downpour, oh well. Might as well splash around in the puddles and run wild. If I see a grassy hill, I might as well roll down it. If I see a toy I like, or a movie that amuses me, I might as well not cover that up under some repressive delusion of being "mature" or sophisticated. If I'm alive, I might as well try to enjoy as much of it as I can.

And this spirit of being childish, this beautiful immaturity that allows us to shed the chrysalis of mundane adulthood in which we must cocoon ourselves so much of the time, is the energy which keeps me supporting the so often maligned Godzilla's Revenge. Even if I am old enough now, whatever that means, to see how shoddy the film is, even if I recognize all the stock photography and entire scenes lifted wholesale out of other Godzilla movies to pad out the running time, even if I see how bad it all is through adult eyes, I remember how completely and unconditionally I loved the film as a child. At that time, it becomes easy to remove the filter of bitterness and condescension that is adulthood, allowing me to watch the movie as I did when I was a wee one, but with the added dimension of wisdom. In that way, Godzilla's Revenge has gotten even better for me with age.

Sorry for the high falutin' diatribe, but sometimes these people with their "it's not just for kids anymore" attitudes need to get off the high horse and enjoy their hobbies rather than hermetically sealing them up in mylar bags to never be touched again. Yeah, my toys are scuffed and missing parts, but I had a hell of a lot more fun with them than you had with your "mint in box, never opened" and that's worth a lot more to me than money.

Okay, so, Godzilla's Revenge. The movie begins with a boy who would become the icon for the entire genre, Ichiro, or as he is better known, Ichiro the Intensely Annoying. Ichiro is the young lad who, among other things, showed us just how annoying a little kid can be, and more shockingly, just how small a little kid's micro-shorts could become. Little shorts are as much a defining icon of the 1970s Japanese monster movie as they were to Catherine Bach in Dukes of Hazzard, though given the choice at age seven of watching Ichiro in Daisy Dukes or watching Daisy Duke in Daisy Dukes, I would go with Daisy every time. I'm childish; I'm not insane.

Actually, the film begins with one of the coolest fuzzed-out surf guitar/spy movie music theme songs I've ever heard. "March of the Monsters" ranks up there on the swankometer right alongside movie themes like "Our Man Flint" and "Shaft," and is every bit as weird and funky as those songs. Right there you have reason enough to dig this movie from the get-go.

Ichiro is a young kid who a lot of kids could relate to at the time. I know I could. His dad worked all day, and his mom worked evenings, so he rarely saw either of them. Like Ichiro, and like thousands of American kids started to do in the late 1960s and early 1970s, I had my own key and came home to an empty house, expected to both behave and entertain myself while my parents worked. To be honest, I have no complaints. My parents were good when they were around, and when they weren't, I learned how to deal with things myself. It's a lesson I'm thankful for to this day. Independence.

Ichiro's only neighbor is a rather creepy inventor toy-maker type guy who is not nearly as cool as the inventor and his hard-bodied little bachelor pal from Godzilla Versus Megalon. This guy is just sort of, well, you know. Maybe not the guy you trust to take care of your kid when you are away. He looks like he was probably heavily involved in experimental theater during the 1960s.

To make matters worse, every day Ichiro walks home with his gal pal, he is pestered by a bully named Gabera and his two sidekicks. When you see these kids, you will realize that it's akin to being bullied by, say, a gang consisting of Eddie Deezen, Matthew Broderick, and that guy who played Conan's goofy sidekick in Conan the Destroyer. In other words, these are not bullies I can see striking fear in the hearts of other elementary school children. Gabera and crew sure as hell ain't Nelson, Jimbo, and Kearney.

Because his parents are never around, and his only friends are a prudish little girl who doesn't like trespassing in old buildings (a staple of my own childhood) and a fruity hippie neighbor, Ichiro has created a disturbingly elaborate fantasy world which may or may not be augmented by the fact that those shorts he wears must restrict the flow of blood through his body, making it more likely that he would live in a happy hallucinatory land of make-believe. When he is alone and feelin' blue, Ichiro gets out his home-made matter transporting radio device and tunes in to his own subconscious. Ahh yes, back when kids used their imagination and played make-believe. Nowadays, it would be a kid sitting down to play Sega for a few hours. It just ain't the same.

Ichiro's trip through his own strange and twisted brain is pretty interesting. His radio transports him to Monster Island, home of Godzilla and plenty of other monsters. But to get there, Ichiro has to board a commercial jet liner that is completely empty and driven by auto-pilot. A telling subconscious symbol of his latchkey kid lifestyle? The plane deposits him alone on Monster Island, where he gets to hide in bushes and watch stock footage from various older Godzilla films, most frequently Son of Godzilla and Godzilla Versus the Sea Monster. After a hard day of watching Godzilla sort of walk around just randomly kicking the collective asses of his neighbors on Monster Island, one starts to wonder if this is how it is every day. I mean, does Godzilla wake up every morning and think, "Well, who's ass am I gonna kick today?" Do they start shit with him, or does he simply pick the fights himself like some drunken redneck in a trailer park (I can make that analogy because it is my heritage)?

What is an average day like for Godzilla? Not those special days when the Earth is threatened by strangers from another world and their big golden dragons, but rather, those days when there's not much to do and no one invading our planet by building a robot that looks exactly like Godzilla instead of spending the money on something more useful and effective, like a neutron bomb. What is the Godzilla equivalent of kicking around the house in your underwear watching a little television? I've always been fascinated by pondering stupid questions like this. Like what does the Pope do when he isn't out Poping? Does he read the paper? Does he own normal clothes or just those glittery Liberace robes? Does the Pope have a jogging outfit?

I wondered the same thing about Darth Vader, too. I mean, sure, there are days when he has to be all "Your powers are weak, old man" and throwing boxes around with his mind, but those days are probably few and far between in the greater scheme of things. So what was his average day like? Filling out paperwork? Going to long, boring meetings about revisions to the zoning laws? I mean, the guy was helping run an empire and all. There's a lot of work involved with that sort of thing. The elevation of the mundane to art. Just once, I would like to see Captain Picard stepping out of the bathroom stall.

Unfortunately, attempts to answer these questions often end up looking like The Star Wars Holiday Special, which goes into excruciating detail about the everyday life of a wookie housewife. Or there are those late era Santo films where he'd already beat all the aliens, vampires, mafia, and devils Mexican theater could throw at him, so you had movies that consisted of stuff like Santo (in three piece suit and wrestling mask) driving to the bank or doing his taxes. At these times, I realize my fascination with seeing mundane everyday aspects of the lives of fantastic characters is usually not as cool in practice as it is in theory, sort of like whenever Scott and I would talk about how funny it would be to rent all three Porky's films. Funny in theory is one thing, but the reality is usually just painful.

Luckily, Godzilla's everyday life consist primarily of getting into fights. Through the miracle of recycled footage, we see Godzilla rumble with Spiga the Spider, those giant praying mantises, and other old faves. When Ichiro is menaced by one of the monsters, he hauls ass through the jungle, which I think was a song by CCR, and falls down a hole. Actually, he falls into a really awful special effect which, along with a later scene of Leapin' Minya Poffo, will show you exactly why they chose to rely mainly on stock footage from other films for all the effects shots.

At this point, I would have imagined myself some wings, and probably a princess who looked just like Penny Robinson from Lost in Space. Ichiro goes instead for a vine rope being lowered by Minya. Incidentally, Minya looks a lot like Ichiro. They're both very spherical in shape. Minya is able to shrink down to Ichiro size and speak English (or Japanese if you are watching the original version) with a "hyuk hyuk hyuk" sort of Country Bear Jamboree accent.

In a deep psychological move, Minya is very much like Ichiro in more ways than just being round. Minya, of course, comes from a single parent family, and that parent, Godzilla, is often absent from home. And hey, Minya is even constantly picked on my a big monster bully named ... Gabera! This Gabera is a little more menacing than the other Gabera, though the shock of bright red Johnny Rotten hair undermines his appearance somewhat. Additionally, it looks like they started to add a tail to Gabera but then ran out of money. He's got a saggy ass and really looks like he needs a tail to complete the whole picture. Imagine Godzilla without a tail. Yep, pretty silly. But at least Gabera can shoot electricity out of his hands. I don't know if the Gabera picking on Ichiro could do that, but I suppose anything is possible in that crazy land we call Japan.

Hey you know what I just realized? Godzilla's Revenge is just a movie adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are, the children's book in which a depressed young boy travels to the land of cavorting monsters and generally has a hell of a good time.

Just when things are getting good, Ichiro is disturbed and snapped back to reality. This happens several times so that we can set up the real world sub plot, conveniently broadcast over the Plot Point Specific Radio Broadcasting Network as listened to frequently by Gilligan and the Professor and many other people in b-movies and bad television shows. Pretty much every broadcast was about a storm, a bank robbery, or the fact that the Harlem Globetrotters plane went down over the Pacific Ocean and they are presumed stranded on a deserted island. This one broadcasts the thing about the bank robbery, though it would have been pretty funny if Ichiro found Curly and Meadowlark Lemon stranded on Monster Island with him.

The bank robbers, who are apparently not so good at robbing banks, happen to be hiding out in the old abandoned industrial hazard in which Ichiro likes to play. Just a quick note that this is probably not an entirely inaccurate portrayal of life in Tokyo's Chiba Prefecture, which is a very blue collar, working class, industrial neighborhood. I mean the part about playing in old buildings, not the part about bank robbers and the Globetrotters. One of the bank robbers drops his wallet, which Ichiro promptly finds, which then means they must kidnap him.

But first, Ichiro must dream, dream, dream himself away to sweet, sweet Monster Island, where Minya introduces him to an unimpressed Godzilla who would rather swat airplanes out of the sky than talk to his stupid son's nerdy friends. Sort of like if you had a fat, beer-swilling dad who sat on the back porch ignoring you in favor of swatting mosquitoes and flies. Hmm, when you think about it, Godzilla is a pretty bad parent. Minya also has a scuffle with Gabera, during which he grows to the size of "little monster" and loses the ability to speak English in favor of making a lame "Bwaah-bwaaah" sound. Gabera not only kicks Minya's ass, he even does that thing where you hold your smaller opponent at bay by pressing your outstretched arm against their forehead, thus causing them the be too far away to hit you with their wildly swinging stubby little arms. This is a good way of fighting midgets, Minya, and Rey Misterio Jr., but you have to watch out because eventually, you're going to do that one time too many, and they're going to drop down and headbutt you in the balls. Happens every time.

All the scenes involving Gabera are new to this film, and in a curious turn, rather than simply cut in stock footage of the infamous "learnin' how to blow atomic breath" scene from Son of Godzilla, they recreate the entire sequence here. For those of you who haven't seen it, it's the one where Minya can only blow harmless rings of blue smoke until Godzilla stomps on his tail, thus shocking him into blowing destructive atomic fire and honking like a donkey in heat.

This is cool and all, but the real world so often gets in the way of fantasy. In a rather imaginative segueway, Ichiro finds himself being attacked by jungle plants, only to wake up and find himself being kidnapped by the bank robbers, who by the way, stole fifty million yen, which I think is about forty-five dollars. As bas as they are at robbing banks, they are even worse at kidnapping. Using all the wits and wiles afforded a kindergarten boy in micro-shorts, Ichiro befuddles and defeats his captors in a sequence that was no doubt the inspiration for the later Home Alone films. Yay! He's a hero now! But not before dozing off one more time to see the final fight between Minya and big bully Gabera. This time, rather than cowering, Minya stands up to Gabera and manages to get a few cheap shots in until Gabera accidentally bites Godzilla, at which time Godzilla decides fun time is over and just kicks the shit out of Gabera himself. Since Gabera is about the same size and Godzilla, you gotta wonder why he was making Minya fight the monster. I mean, that's like a father telling his seven-year-old to stand up to a bully like Mike Tyson.

Anyway, everyone has fun beating up Gabera, and inspired by this show of familial violence, Ichiro wakes up with renewed vigor and, in front of his girlfriend, struts up and beats the shit out of his own Gabera in a fight that consists mainly of jumpcut shots of two young boys pulling on each other shirts. Actually, it's a pretty realistic fight in that it is clumsy and really sucks. At the end of the day, Ichiro has beat down Gabera, impressed the little lady, and gained the respect of all his peers.

So come on! What's not to love? I mean, this movie is every little kid's dream! Sure, in the real world, even if you beat a bully, it's likely he'll come back a day later with even more friends and beat you up worse than before, but hey! This is a movie, unsullied by the sad inaccurate myth about "standing up to a bully will make him go away.' No, it just makes him more mad. But never mind that.

The movie was directed by none other than Inoshiro Honda, the man who gave us the dark and ominous original film, as well as most of the Godzilla films from the 1960s that people remember as the best of the bunch. In interviews, he expressed disappointment in the movement of Godzilla from an icon of terror into a do-gooder hero under pressure from the studios to make the series more consumer-friendly -- and boy did they ever succeed. While I understand his sentiments, he should also look at the fact that while Godzilla did indeed lose his power as a warning about the follies of man, he also became a symbol of hope about the future. While the later Godzilla films did not shake the world with portents of doom, they made children and nerds happy. They, in their own weird and colorful way, even taught children the lessons adults failed to learn from the original.

I started thinking about environmental issues as a kid after seeing Godzilla Versus the Smog Monster and watching episodes of Spectreman. I started, honestly, thinking about the follies of war after seeing how much trouble it caused in Godzilla and other scifi films. As goofy and as immature as movies like Godzilla's Revenge may seem to adults, and even to their creators, they do serve a genuine purpose. A couple years ago, with my blessing, my best friend back in Louisville gave her six-year-old daughter my copy of Godzilla's Revenge. A Godzilla fan was instantly created. She forsook her interest in Teletubbies in favor of more Godzilla films, started pretending to be Minya instead of pretending to be a cat, and hasn't stopped exploring since then. And you know why? Because she's a child. Because she has that spark that keeps away the walls of prejudice, fear, suspicion, and bigotry that creep in as we get older. Like me when I was her age, she doesn't know Japanese from American and doesn't discriminate on such arbitrary grounds as race. She simply knows what she likes and wants to learn more about it.

A pity children's entertainment today is so mindless, gutless, and unintelligent. For all it's oddball weirdness and annoying micro-shorts buffalo shots, Godzilla's Revenge is a children's movie they simply won't make anymore, one that teaches children the value of self-reliance in the face of adversity. Okay, so maybe I'm injecting a little more into a stupid kiddie movie than I should; so what?

I won't pretend that it doesn't have it's short-comings, or that I am completely able to overlook them all the way I did when I was in first grade. Yeah, Ichiro is annoying, so annoying in fact that I was inspired to invent the Ichirometer, the scale by which all annoying cinematic children are measured. Ichiro, of course, is the perfect ten. So far the only child I've found that even comes close to Ichiro is "Little Bob" from the dubbed version of Lucio Fulci's House By the Cemetery, though if I have to see the commercial one more time, that whispering watery-eyed kid from Sixth Sense is going to give them both a run for their yen and lira.

And yeah, the movie is cheaper than whatever "cheaper than some type of hooker" joke you want to apply. The majority of the monster scenes are all from older movies. When they do attempt a special effect, like when Minya jumps off the cliff to foil Gabera with the ol' "bad guy standing on the end of a teeter totter" type move, it's pretty sorry. At the same time, as goofy as he is, Gabera always seemed cool to me when I was little, and it's always good to see Godzilla kick some butt, even if most of it just consists of his greatest tropical island hits. None of that spoiled it for me as a kid, and since I remember so well how much I liked it back then, I still appreciate and enjoy it today.

It also signaled the end of the "golden age" of Godzilla films and kicked off the "right silly age' under the guidance of new official Godzilla director Jun Fukuda. And of course you may be wondering at what point Godzilla actually gets any revenge. Well, he doesn't really, unless you count the thrashing he gives Gabera in the final monster scene as revenge for the one time Gabera bit him. Seems a pretty small incident, though, in the greater scheme of things. I'd like to thing that the revenge to which they refer is what they get now any time a pompous, overly serious Godzilla fan watches this movie.

If more Godzilla fans could get the broom out of their ass and actually enjoy the films rather than nitpick and dissect them under an electron microscope, they'd see that in its own way, for its own audience, Minya and Godzilla's Revenge are as effective and important to the series as the original. Try to put it in perspective next time you watch it. You might discover it's not so bad, micro-shorts and all.

Actually, now that I think about it, a gang consisting of Eddie Deezen, Matthew Broderick, and Tracey Walter actually is pretty intimidating...

Labels: B-Masters Roundtable, Country: Japan, Director: Inoshiro Honda, Science Fiction: Kaiju, Series: Godzilla, Year: 1969

posted by Keith at 4:33 PM | 0 Comments

Thursday, September 20, 2001

A Touch of Zen

1969, Taiwan. Starring Ping-Yu Chang, Roy Chiao, Shih Chun, Hsu Feng, Hsue Han, Ying-chieh Han, Tien Miao, Peng Tien, Cien Tsao, Pai Ying, Sammo Hung. Directed by King Hu. Available on DVD (Amazon).

Sometimes, a movie is so big that getting a grasp on exactly where you should begin a mere review is intimidating. King Hu's 1969 masterpiece, A Touch of Zen definitely falls into this classification, an elite spot held by only a precious few films in my pantheon. Needless to say, among fans of both Hong Kong cinema and cinema in general, this film has garnered a tremendous reputation, even taking an award at the Canne's Film Festival (a feat that used to actually mean something).

And in every way, A Touch of Zen lives up to it's monumental rep. Although the action focuses on a limited number of characters and locations, it drums up an overwhelming, epic feel, thanks in part to amazing cinematography. Every technical aspect of this film is damn near perfect: the camera work, the acting, the sound effects and music. And beyond the conventional aspects of film-making, the script is simply astounding. King Hu takes a fairly conventional martial arts plot and expands it to a grand scope, both physically and spiritually.

For those of us trying to see the film now, the task is even more daunting than writing a meaningful review. Upon it's completion, the film reportedly ran some 400 or so minutes long (!), and was cut down to just under three hours for Cannes Film Festival. Currently, I've never found anywhere offering the entire mammoth thing either on videotape or film. But even at it's chopped 187 minute running time (the most common one, it seems), this "lost film" is a mesmerizing classic, and whatever edits were made do not hurt the overall flow of action or plot.

I might also add that this is one of those films that absolutely must be viewed in it's full, widescreen format. King Hu uses every inch of the screen. No space is left ignored, and to see a pan and scan, cropped version of this film would devastate the effort that went into making it. There are plenty of films out there that are not really hurt by the cropping that happens to transfer it to video/television. This film is simply not one of them. You literally miss half the film if you don't see this letterboxed.

Set during the Ming Dynasty, A Touch of Zen begins with a young scholar named Ku who seems to lack ambition or direction in life. He meets a mysterious swordsman one day, and from that point on, life gets increasingly strange. The abandoned fort in which he and his mother live (abandoned because it is supposed to be haunted) soon sees a new tenant arrive, a young woman named Yang (Hsu Feng). Everyone seems to take an avid interest in the comings and goings around the haunted fort. Before long, Ku discovers that Yang is a wanted fugitive and masterful swordswoman. The mysterious swordsman is there to bring her in, dead or alive (preferably dead).

It turns out that she was a member of an honest noble family that had uncovered all sorts of treachery within the ranks of a government faction known as the Eastern Group. Before the report could be made, the Eastern Group, lead by an evil Eunuch, murdered her family. Only she, a good general, and one other man escaped. Like King Hu's Dragon Inn, the film revolves around a central location and the various attempts by each party to outwit and outmaneuver one another. Ku joins the rebels, lending them his knowledge of military tactics and other scholarly advice. he also falls in love with Yang, who seems to want to return his affections but cannot, and does not want to endanger Ku's life by entangling him in the ever-growing web.

The action choreography is great, and much like the entire film, sits firmly in between the Shaw Brothers style of swordplay popular in films like One-Armed Swordsman and Trail of the Broken Blade, and the Japanese style of martial arts film-making popular in samurai films. Of the two, samurai films have always been the more technically adept films, with even many of the best Shaw Brothers swordsman epics having a haphazard look to them. A Touch of Zen definitely ranks up there with absolute best film sin term of the actual construction, easily on par with Kurosawa at his best.

The second half of the film takes a far more spiritual turn, as Yang and the heroic General seek the protection of a group of monks who, like most monks in martial arts films, are allowed to kick ass but still be all into peace and harmony. A striking finale ensues with some of the most inspired film-making I have ever witnessed. A surrealist wave overcomes the film, and in the end, those who are in tune with nature are still standing, and those aren't have died.

The quick of eye will spot Sammo Hung as one of the right-hand men of the General of the Eastern Group. I should also point out that the whole "evil Eunuch" thing is very much grounded in factual history. In the latter days of the Ming Dynasty, Imperial Eunuchs were given a tremendous amount of power, and many of them abused it mercilessly. Eventually, the government of China decayed into a state of madness, chaos, and confusion, which allowed the Ch'ings from Manchuria to sweep through the country and set up one of the longest foreign-controlled dynasty in the history of the country. The other foreign-controlled Dynasty was the Yuan, which was founded by invading Mongolians but barely lasted over a quarter of a century.

It makes for interesting "revisionist" history in many films where the heroes are Ming patriots and the Ming Dynasty is viewed as heroic and virtuous. Certainly, no one in China wanted the Ch'ings to roll in and take things over, but the Ming Dynasty was so bloated with insanity and corruption that it was hardly worth fighting for. But I guess you'll take what you can get. Better to have domestic madmen controlling your life than foreign ones. And after all, the Mings made those nice vases.

King Hu creates one classic scene after another, meticulously rendered and delivered like an epic poem. The sword fight in the bamboo forest is brilliant, but my favorite scene comes after one of the big showdowns with the Eastern Group. Having used a variety of tricks and traps, the small band of heroic rebels slaughter a whole legion of soldiers. After the battle, Scholar Ku walks from trap to trap, laughing with joy at the ingenuity he has show, remembering how each weapon and trap was tested on a collection of stuffed dummies.

And then, all of a sudden, he steps into the overgrown courtyard, which is choked with the corpses of the men slain in the fight. The transformation of his demeanor from joviality to utter terror as he realizes the true cost of their fight, and that these are not dummies, but actual human beings, is staggering in its power, partly because it's handled in such a subtle way. A lesser director, or a lesser actor, would have gone for a sudden collapse into crying madness and fear. Here, however, the effect of Ku's revelation is more subtle, and much more powerful. Only a few actors understand and can use the power of subtlety.

A Touch of Zen would find itself on the top of any list of favorites I could ever come up with. It is a landmark piece of work, and I think, quite possibly, the greatest film to come out of the Hong Kong/Taiwan/China area. Hell, it's one of the greatest films to have come out anywhere in the world. The end had me just sitting wide-eyed in the dark, thinking about the final moments, final images, for quite some time before finally moving to turn the television off.

Labels: Director: King Hu, Historical Epics, Martial Arts: Wu Xia, Year: 1969

posted by Keith at 10:26 PM | 0 Comments

Tuesday, February 13, 2001

And God Said to Cain

1969, Italy. Starring Klaus Kinski, Joaquín Blanco, Antonio Cantafora, Peter Carsten, Lucio De Santis, Guido Lollobrigida, Marcella Michelangeli, Luciano Pigozzi, Giuliano Raffaelli. Directed by Antonio Margheriti.

You know things are going to be weird when Klaus Kinski is your hero. Without even trying, Kinski is one of the creepiest stars to ever grace the screen. Never mind that he, like another creepy liittle guy by the name of Dario Argento, managed to apply his gene pool to an absolute wonder of a daughter (in this case, Nastasia Kinski). When Klaus steps into a scene, it immediately acquires a sinister edge. Being able to exude that sort of subtle influence is quite an accomplishment, though it must make him a real downer at parties.

Spaghetti Westerns generally rely ont he age-old "vengeance seeking stranger" plot. A mysterious wronged man rides into town and starts offing the evil men responsible for the injustices he has endured. Something like 95% of all Spaghetti Westerns adhere to this formula, which was pretty fun for a while. But you can only watch so many gunslinging angels of death before you start wondering if maybe they shouldn't try something else.

Well, that something else isn't And God Said to Cain, which is about a vengeance seeking stranger. The stranger in this case is a guy named Gary (Klaus Kinski). I know, I know. Gary isn't a very heroic or tough name. I bet in all the annals of cinema you would be hard pressed to find many heroic Garys (or is that Garies?). Not that there's anything wrong with being named Gary. It's a fine name. But it's not like being named "Maximillan Savagewood" or "Jack Deth."

Gary is doing hard time for a crime he didn't commit. When a presidential decree sets to releasing convicts who are veterans of the Civil War, Gary gets his ticket to freedom and hops on a stagecoach ridin' headlong into the bloody red sun of revenge. How's that?

The guy who framed Gary for a robbery is now living the posh life as a rich guy, which is par for the Spaghetti Western course. No one ever sets up their friend and then generally has a bad time of it. No, they must always go on to lives of gluttonous prosperity so the hero can come and shoot their bourgeois ass dead. And that's what Gary is going to do. Of course, in another convention of the genre, the evil robber baron type has a noble and honest son who is unaware of his father's treachery and dark past. Oh yeah, there's also a wicked deceitful woman and a crazy old coot.

In fact, Spaghetti Western formula requires that the old coot and a beautiful but lower class Mexican woman help our hero out. And they sure do. You're life is pretty good if at every turn you have the help of a beautiful Mexican woman or a crazy old coot. You just know everything is going to be okay as long as you have the senorita and some jig-dancing, grizzled old bearded codger in red ass-flap jammies.

So far there's nothing to set this film apart from the rest of the pack. It plays it pretty much by the book, with one interesting twist. Gary arrives to deal out deadly justice on the night of a big storm and tornado. He uses guerrilla tactics, stalking around in the shadows and burial catacombs beneath the town, popping up from time to time to give his shotgun a workout and fill the bad guy's lackeys full of lead. Occasionally, he takes time out from his stalking and killing to ring the church bell, much to the annoyance of the bad guys and probably anyone else within earshot.

The storm and catacombs lend the film a more gothic, almost horror setting, which is appropriate for the creepiness that Kinski can't help but exude even as a protagonist. In fact, adding elements of horror and surrealism is how directors tried to keep the vengeance seeking stranger plots going while providing a new twist, and for the most part I'm a fan of the move. No one, and I mean no one, can do spooky imagery like the Italians, with the exception of French surrealist-horror director Jean Rollin.

Of course, you can't talk about any Spaghetti Western without mentioning the music. Even the worst Spag Westerns often have amazing scores. And God Said to Cain has a decent soundtrack by Carlo Savina, though it's nothing that really sticks in my head. Kinda bluesy sounding in a lot of spots.

The horror elements, along with a brisk pace and solid acting make And God Said to Cain a thoroughly enjoyable, if not entirely outstanding, piece of cinema. It doesn't stray too far from the formula, and it has no interest in sub-plots or anything beyond "Klaus Kinski is going shoot them," but even a generic plot can be great fun when done well, and it's done pretty well here. The horror elements and lurking about in the church lend the film a differentiating element that make the movie among the more enjoyable vengeance seeking stranger films around.

Labels: Director: Antonio Margheriti, Spaghetti Westerns, Stars: Klaus Kinski, Year: 1969

posted by Keith at 11:06 PM | 0 Comments

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