(1981)
Dir - Patrick Tam
Overall: MEH
An unfocused narrative and poor character construction undermine Patrick Tam's sophomore effort Love Massacre, (Ai sha); an otherwise stark and menacing art film. Set in San Francisco yet exclusively a Hong Kong production with no Americans in sight, Tam builds an intense, borderline surreal atmosphere within a modest budget, utilizing lingering/photogenic shots, minimal incidental music, some aloof performances, a largely white color scheme, and a lumbering pace. Apparently, the only existing print as of this writing have omitted much of the bloodshed and particularly leaves the final act in a stage of disarray, which is hardly Tam's fault if this is merely a result of permanent censorship. Even with the gore left on the cutting room table, the story still comes off as hazily constructed and could be about love's obsessiveness or merely the tragedy of undiagnosed mental illness. Likely a little of both, Tam's emphasis on style over substance does not render viewer interest for either Brigitte Lin's protagonist, her suicidal buddy Tina Lau, said buddy's unhinged brother Kuo-Chu Chang's, or said buddy's boring ex-boyfriend Charlie Chin, all of whom get thrown into a love-square that gets abandoned at regular intervals for more beautiful and subdued mood-setting.
(1982)
Dir - Chi Chang
Overall: WOOF
A rightfully infamous Tawain/Hong Kong co-production, Calamity of Snakes, (Ren she da zhan, War Between Man and Snakes), features the real life murder of a countless amount of its title reptiles while simultaneously playing itself off as an exploitative comedy. Most of the first two acts revolve around cartoonishly sleazy rich people having mind-numbingly boring conversations, but thousands of snakes of various sizes are utilized, showing up in every location imaginable from a construction site, to a warehouse, to cars, to every room in a luxury apartment complex, (including a hallway scene where the carpet is invisible due to the amount of slithery reptiles that are crawling all over it). As far as the animal cruelty is concerned, they are sliced apart, bitten, stomped on, crushed by equipment, set on fire, thrown haphazardly at the poor actors, and even have their gallbladders cut open so that even less fortunate actors can drink the blood. That last part may be fake, but the on-screen snake destruction certainly is not. Unsurprisingly then coming from arguably the least classy movie ever made, it is about as entertaining as it is intentionally funny, (meaning not at all), but trash fans may have a field day with the horrendous tonal issues and shameless dedication to its obnoxious shock value.
(1987)
Dir - Hiroaki Yoshida
Overall: GOOD
Serving as a bleak allegory for both Japanese and Jewish racial perceptions, Hiroaki Yoshida's Twilight of the Cockroaches, (Gokiburi-tachi no Tasogare), is an ambitious live action/animation hybrid, as well as one of the earlier animes to break through to Western audiences. Anthropomorphizing insects with human faces, voices, and their own culture seeped in traditions and religion, the lone human characters have no dialog and are seen as an imposing, passive force that mirrors the cruel detachment of a higher power. At the same time, it is impossible not to look at the roaches plight as being anything but concurrent with both the holocaust and the atomic bomb genocide of Japan from World War II. There are generational issues at play as well, concerning the tribe's assimilation into a world that has always been out to get them, with the younger members having lived a life of luxury and the elders being more accustomed to a survival of the fittest mentality in order to strengthen their divine species. Throw in a love triangle, a clever first act where the roaches live the high life in a bachelor's inhumanly filth apartment, and the reveal that said bachelor has only come to coexist with his Blattodea roommates due to a crippling depression after his family has left him, and this becomes a dense work with a lot more to unpack than say Joe's Apartment for obvious comparison.
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