Dir - Yuen Woo-ping
Overall: WOOF
Intentional Hong Kong "comedies" are inherently painful viewing experiences and martial arts choreographer/director Yuen Woo-ping's Dreadnaught, (Yong zhe wu ju), is one of the more wretched offenders of such dated, hare-brained nonsense falling on deaf ears decades after its release. Mislabeled as a quasi-horror film, there are no supernatural components of any kind, unless you count the usual physics-defying bouts of agility that every character seems to possess. Though Yuen had previous success with Jackie Chan on similar goofy genre hybrids, this one is ruined by horrendous characters, a comparative lack of wild fight sequences, and some of the worst attempts at humor involving a bumbling police force, (including the least funny man who ever lived, cross-eyed character actor Tau Wan Yue). At least a showdown in an empty theater is inventively staged and atmospherically sinister, plus the finale bought between Yuen Shun-yee's kabuki made-up bad guy and Yuen Biao's cowardly dipshit "hero", (who inexplicably becomes a kung-fu dynamo with mere minutes in the running time left to spare), is enjoyably absurd if anyone watching can make it that far.
(1985)
Dir - Masayoshi Sukita
Overall: GOOD
A fifty-four minute, oddball feature and the only solo directorial venture from cinematographer Masayoshi Sukita, Gakidama, (Gakidama - The Demon Within), is slim on story yet brimful of surprisingly subtle atmosphere and some wonderfully grotesque puppet work/shots of people eating. A twisted, Japanese answer to the 1980s Gremlin craze of knock-offs, this one is void of any and all kid-friendly cutesiness and for a film about a tiny rubber ghoul that gets puked up from humans only to want to crawl back inside of them, it has an eerie, low-key atmosphere that favors dimly-lit scenery, hardly any incidental music, and a deliberate pace. Playing out more like a somber supernatural tale than puppet monster mayhem, it is a strikingly unique work that delivers intense set pieces and stomach-churning spectacle. The creature of the title, (which goes from a will o’ the wisp spirit, to a larva-esque insect, to slimy Ghoulies reject), is hilariously unconvincing, yet Sukita's camerawork and sense of staging is endlessly inventive, which culminates in an extended homage to Dan Curtis' seminal Trilogy of Terror Zuni doll cat and mouse chase.
(1986)
Dir - Kaizô Hayashi
Overall: MEH
The highly experimental debut To Sleep So as to Dream, (Yumemiru yôni nemuritai), from filmmaker Kaizô Hayashi is evocative in its images, yet the stationary pacing and boldly incomprehensible narrative make it an unnecessarily challenging viewing experience. Describing what may or may not be going on here is a fool's errand, but condensing it down to a film noir trapped in a silent movie fever dream may be as close as one can get to pinning it down. Though it contains an array of sound effects, lush music, and voices are heard on a tape recording and through the words of a benshi narrator, the only other dialog is shown in intertitles as a hard-boiled-egg-loving private investigator, (get it?), and his assistant follow a gyroscope for clues in finding an elderly actor's kidnapped daughter. The black and white cinematography was done by Yûichi Nagata and Shoji Taki and is the star of the show, capturing the expressionistic aesthetic of silent cinema with an endless stream of ethereal images. It is certainly unique from a stylistic standpoint and defies genre classification, but it is also unavoidably pretentious and frustrating by spinning its wheels with zero momentum at too many intervals.
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