90's American Horror Part Thirteen

ARACHNOPHOBIA
(1990)
Dir - Frank Marshall
Overall: GOOD

Harmless and lighthearted, (not to be confused with the pesky arachnids present in the film itself), Arachnophobia is a decent nature horror movie that knows not to take itself that seriously.  Familiar elements such as city folk moving to the country and a small town besieged by "fill in the blank" do not go to any great lengths in setting themselves apart from dozens of others with the same chemical make-up.  Yet the script by Don Jakoby and Wesley Strick sprinkles enough well-timed humor to make you forget the familiar enough premise.  In his full-length debut, Frank Marshall, (who would follow this up with the much less deliberately funny Alive), shows adequate skill at playing with the common fear of spiders that most filmgoers have as he consistently teases them for maximum squeamish effect.  While it is certainly kid friendly enough, there are still some ghastly deaths shown to make the threat seem plausible.  Both John Goodman and Jeff Daniels are respectfully amusing, though the later incessantly talking to himself during the feverish finale does get slightly annoying.  For a movie whose outcome is to be made pleasantly uncomfortable while making the viewer double or triple check their showers, slippers, or toilets, it does an adequate job.

FIRE IN THE SKY
(1993)
Dir - Robert Lieberman
Overall: GOOD

Based off of Travis Walton's alleged autobiographical book The Walton Experience, (one of the many documented UFO abductions that has been regularly regarded as a hoax for numerous reasons), Fire in the Sky still provides an ample enough premise for what is essentially a semi-horror movie.  The film is highly admirable for its single, horrifying and inventive abduction scene which it builds towards for nearly the entire running time and it is indeed about as skin-crawling as such cinematic moments come.  While everything before that is not necessarily a chore to sit though and the acting is strong all around, the script from frequent Star Trek: The Next Generation screenwriter Tracy Tormé leaves a couple of arcs unfulfilled.  There are interesting characters present, but they all end up eventually getting abandoned and then once the show-stopping alien stuff finally happens, the movie chooses to have nowhere else to go and then quickly wraps itself up.  Still, it is a compelling, be it sensationalized look at treating one of America's most famous abductee cases as if it where real while at the same time emphasizing the sort of lose/lose scenario that those who are stuck back on earth are left with when no one will believe them.

THE LAST BROADCAST
(1998)
Dir - Stefan Avalos/Lance Weiler
Overall: WOOF

Noteworthy as an early entry into the found footage sub-genre, The Last Broadcast was made for less than a thousand dollars which would be admirable if not for the fact that almost none of it works.  As we are introduced to our detrimentally, charismatic-less narrator/director stand-in from the very first frame, things are off to a very bad start.  His casting is so erroneous that the film never recovers, not that it does not continue to make further mistakes as it goes on.  It is forgivable how shoddy the presentation is granted the teeny-tiny budget.  Everyone looks like they are being interviewed in their living rooms and have the typical acting chops of your aunt or cousin that you asked very nicely to be in your movie.  Yet writer/director/producer/actors Stefan Avalos and Lance Weiler do not offer nearly enough details with their story to reel one in.  This would basically make for a highly forgettable Unsolved Mysteries episode, except we get Boring Man instead of Robert Stack as the host.  The Last Broadcast gets by on its shortcomings up until the final few minutes which throws a laughably insulting twist at us for absolutely no reason.  The movie is officially broken at this point and despite the filmmaker's best efforts, there is practically nothing left to appreciate.

90's American Horror Part Twelve

DAUGHTER OF DARKNESS
(1990)
Dir - Stuart Gordon
Overall: MEH

Stuart Gordon's return to horror after the brief diversion into sci-fi with Robot Jox was the made for television vampire yarn Daughter of Darkness.  Shot in Budapest and featuring a primarily Eastern European cast, familiar faces Mia Sara and Anthony Perkins are in the leads yet they unfortunately deliver uneven performances.  Perkins fairs better and does in fact class up what is essentially a silly B-movie, but his accent gets unintentionally silly at times.  Sara on the other hand is frequently trying too hard and laying the melodrama on a bit heavy, but it is not like the lame dialog that she is given necessarily helps.  One or two fairly creepy moments aside, the script is pretty lousy with some "twists" that are either predictable, eye-ball rolling, or both.  There are also generic plot points including spooky dreams with Sara startling herself awake about half a dozen times.  Even if their tongues have tiny little mouths at the end of them instead of biting people with teeth, the vampire lore here is not particularly satisfying either as it is another case of an underground, romantically-dressed undead society who wants to procreate with a chosen one kind of to take over the world and blah blah whatever. 

NEEDFUL THINGS
(1993)
Dir - Fraser C. Heston
Overall: MEH

When the conclusion of your suspense-building horror movie amounts to "People yell and make speeches at the villain and then he leaves", good luck pulling that off and not making it embarrassing.   Charlton Heston's son Fraser in his theatrical debut does an adequate job of keeping the schlock almost entirely at bay during the first two acts of Needful Things.  Yet for the finale, the gloves fly off and what was a somewhat fun and only slightly goofy affair with a decent enough premise turns into something more closely resembling Wes Craven at his mix-matched, cornball worst.  It is a cliche in itself to point out how the ending to a Stephen King movie, (or story), so very often drops the ball, but simply not being surprised here by such a thing is of course not an excuse.  Performance wise, Max von Sydow is wonderful and calmly menacing while everyone else is too underwritten to do anything besides yell "Son of a bitch!" a lot.  Juggling an entire small town and trying to give weight to all of their bickering feuds understandably gets muddy and several characters as well as side arcs are bypassed.  In the meantime, ridiculous details like Sydow's mysteriously Lucifer stand-in unnecessarily keeping newspaper clippings of every major tragedy that has happened in the 20th century all casually lying about his basement that he just moved into does further damage to the entire thing.

MIMIC
(1997)
Guillermo del Toro
Overall: MEH

The first American-speaking film from Guillermo del Toro was a highly troubled one behind the scenes.  Being a Miramax production, Bob Weinstein nearly came to blows with del Toro over the latter's handling of the material, stormed the set while demanding it be directed a certain way, and then had final cut anyway.  All of this made the experience one that del Toro claimed was the worst of his career and he would continue to make all of his truly lauded works for awhile back home in Mexico where he had free creative reign.  Mimic is not a bad giant bugs run amok movie really, but it is far from a remarkable one.  Tone wise it is very solid with only the most minute silliness creeping into the proceedings, generally handled by a wise-cracking Josh Brolin and Charles C. Dutton saying "fuck" a multitude of times.  Otherwise, it is pretty icky and, (literally), dark.  The practical effects look fine if again too difficult to really see at times, while the digital ones are piss-pour, as was common of the era.  It is far too easy to tune out of the story altogether though which is highly formulaic and lacking in interesting set pieces during the entire first half.  By the time everyone is trapped in a subway and doing implausible things like blowing up an enormous area with leaking gas and a spark, or getting a decades-abandoned subway cart to run by using a pair of glasses, (no exaggeration), it is more unintentionally dumb than skin-crawling.

90's American Horror Part Eleven

CAPE FEAR
(1991)
Dir - Martin Scorsese
Overall: MEH

As iconic as many or even most of Martin Scorsese's works are, his remake of Cape Fear still manages to stand out as a highly memorable if not altogether excellent one amongst them.  Comparing it to the man's most paramount films, Cape Fear does not hold up of course, but it can still at least be enjoyed for Robert De Niro sinking his teeth into probably the most evil and disturbed character that he ever played.  Cutting down his body weight to four percent, adopting an almost silly southern drawl, and paying an orthodontist to literally jack up his teeth in real life, De Niro as usual steals all of his scenes and creates a movie villain for the books.  The rest of the partly A-list cast is likewise excellent, though Gregory Peck's swansong cameo is honesty a bit silly.  By utilizing some of Alfred Hitchcock's initial storyboards for the 1962 original, Scorsese very deliberately channels the highly influential master of suspense, with Bernard Herman's incessant score likewise further amping the whole thing up.  Problems come from the script itself which stretches any would-be realism to a non-existing point and the plot holes are many.  After all though, it did inspire arguably the finest Sideshow Bob Simpsons episode ever so it is still rather difficult to hate.

MINDWARP
(1992)
Dir - Steve Barnett
Overall: MEH

Produced by Fangoria's one-time production company, Mindwarp is a standard post-apocalyptic, straight to video B-movie for all that it is worth.  Relying entirely on practical effects, the most is made of its tight budget and there are some legitimately nasty moments involving cannibalism, breeding, insect-borrowing, torture, and human sacrifice.  The film's mutant brutes look impressive enough and scenes involving crucified skeletons and blood being drunk out of skulls are rather gruesome and nifty.  Bruce Campbell does a sturdy job as usual and none other than Angus Scrimm from Phantasm fame is appropriately hammy, but Marta Martin in the lead is pretty wooden unfortunately.  All of the major plot points are easily anticipated in the script by John Brancato and Michael Ferris, both of whom also wrote the two dumbest entries in the Terminator franchise, not surprisingly.  The film drags a bit where it should not though as the entire second act is people getting captured, then escaping, then getting captured again, then repeat.  This combined with the standard, predictable story does not really make Mindwarp that interesting of a movie, even if it is not all together a bad one.

SLEEPY HOLLOW
(1999)
Dir - Tim Burton
Overall: MEH

Coming after the disastrous pre-production spent on the unfilmed Superman Lives, Tim Burton made his first shift towards the style of remakes and films based off of famous literary works, (nearly all of which have stared Johnny Depp), with Sleepy Hollow, only loosely inspired by the Washington Irvin story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow".  While fairytale logic, cartoonishly flamboyant visuals, and Danny Elfman's score that only shuts the hell up for about three seconds at a time, (and only about three times total), were nothing new to Burton's work.  Here though, they are brought even more to the forefront.  This is the most unapologetically Gothic film the director had yet made, unmistakably paying tribute to numerous Hammer movies as well as Black Sunday by Mario Bava.  Speaking of the latter, it may as well be in black and white due to how much color saturation was used which makes further sense since Burton and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki at one point pitched it colorless anyway.  As a straight up horror film for once as well as a period piece, Burton's quirky humor and singular strangeness takes more of a backseat while his other aforementioned trademarks run rampant.  It is a bit too commercially structured with a script in desperate need of proper character development and as this would set the stage for many other comparatively "lazy" projects for Burton that would take up his time for the next few decades still at this writing, it can fairly be seen as the first significant slip in his filmography.

90's Foreign Horror Part Three

THE GERMAN CHAINSAW MASSACRE
(1990)
Dir - Christopher Schlingensief
Overall: MEH

The phrase "trying too hard" can be accurately applied to Christopher Schlingensief's wackadoo The German Chainsaw Massacre, (Blackest Heart).  It is a movie that is at once a parody of Tobe Hooper's seminal The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and also some sort of politically-conscious, absurdist metaphor for Germany's reunification period where prejudice feelings about East and West Germans towards each other is exaggerated to comically violent heights.  To get anywhere resembling being entertained while watching it, one has to fully accept the lunacy present and turn off all rational comfort zones.  At just over an hour long, the film manages to bulldoze you with screaming followed by more screaming and no less than every single character running around like a maniac and screaming some more.  There are no good guys; just a bunch of deranged people yammering on, (and screaming), about Germany this or Germany that while liquefying peoples heads, raping them, or talking in a silly voice to a skeleton they think is real.  Plus other stuff.  It still manages to be occasionally amusing to those who can stomach such relentless nonsense, (and screaming), but it is certainly a bit much in any event.

PRIKOSNOVENIYE
(1992)
Dir - Albert S. Mkrtchyan
Overall: GOOD

What benefits Albert S. Mkrtchyan's supernatural oddity Prikosnoveniye, (The Contact), the most is its placid tone.  It is clearly produced on a near invisible budget and stretches out a few scenes unnecessarily to fill the time, but Mkrtchyan appears skilled enough to make the strange tale of vengeful spirits abide by its own rules and remain consciously ambiguous enough to be rather spooky.  The nihilistic, suicide-encouraging, ghostly forces at work are a curious bunch and in the usual horror movie fashion, their powers are random depending on how scary a particular scene is supposed to be.  They can manipulate real life events and even possess people, but they still need to convince their victims to off themselves and at the same time have to open windows to leave a room.  Some of this works on probably intentional, fairytale logic, such as their stronger influence over children and the fact that the main protagonist's catchphrase seems to be all that is required to set off the haunting shenanigans once more.  The intriguing premise carries a lot of weight on its own though, which is helped by fine performances and an appropriate, moody score.  It is certainly not an uplifting experience by any stretch, but more a cold, dour, and slightly uncomfortable one that is successfully done in a minimalist fashion.

CUBE
(1997)
Dir - Vincenzo Natali
Overall: MEH

The debut from Detroit-born filmmaker Vincenzo Natali, Cube was based off of his own short Elevated, itself inspired by the 1961 Twilight Zone episode "Five Characters in Search of an Exit".  The premise here is rock solid; several strangers trapped in a maze who have to utilize whatever wits they have to escape before they go crazy, starve, and/or turn against each other.  Made on a measly three-hundred and fifty thousand dollar budget, Natali makes remarkable use of it with different colored lights to decorate his sole set.  The dated though sparsely used digital effects make it as optically fancy as any heavily financed film of its day.  While it does not resemble a B-movie in look and Natali excellently stages a number of very tense scenes to go along with his highly intriguing scenario, Cube sadly comes apart do to some overtly campy performances and embarrassing dialog.  While David Hewlett mostly keeps it together as the cynical loner type, everyone else either chews their scenery like a ravenous lion or displays acting chops on par with a high school drama play.  Many of the conclusions the characters come to, (and all of them concerning their own trauma-fueled bickering), seem laughably random, demoting any character development to be found.  It is good in bits and one can certainly see the appeal, but fairly, one has to admit some consistent flaws are present all the same.

90's Foreign Horror Part Two

BABY BLOOD
(1990)
Dir - Alain Robak
Overall: GOOD

Acting as sort of a French, female-centered answer to Frank Henenlotter's Brain Damage except more gory, Alain Robak's Baby Blood, (The Evil Within in the US), is surprisingly entertaining despite its occasionally disturbing subject matter.  Revolving around a brutalized and raped, former circus performer who becomes manipulated to the point of tragedy, the movie sprinkles enough outrageous bits to cause genuine laughter.  Robak does an admirable job of keeping said female lead, (Emmanuelle Escourrou), consistently on the sympathetic side even as the bloodshed revs up to both funny and uncomfortable degrees by her very hand.  What the movie could be saying about the often harsh and unfair treatment of women or the connection between mother and fetus is distorted to a pretty outlandish extent, but the film decently balances its tone and remains interesting at the very least until its appropriately splatter-laced ending.  A sequel would emerge a full eighteen years later, (though Robak would step down from the director's chair for it), but as is almost always the case, the story here is wrapped up in a fittingly and messy enough way to stand on its own.

THE CHEKIST
(1992)
Dir - Aleksandr Rogozhkin
Overall: MEH

Whatever is to be made of the Russian Civil War film The Chekist rather depends on how harrowing of an experience one can endure.  This is certainly similar to many other such movies that portray in unflinching detail the types of real life war atrocities that were committed in fairly recent memory.  Which is to say that they are far, far from enjoyable filmgoing experiences.  Aleksandr Rogozhkin makes a point of not letting up on showing the gratuitous amount of human life that was disposed of by the Cheka police force that systematically and ruthlessly eliminated upwards of many thousands during this time.  The ones that are doing the killing either make light of it, fight amongst themselves, or become numb to the point of inevitable madness and the ones being killed likewise range from calmly excepting of their fate, to begging for their lives, to proudly snubbing their executioners up until the last minute.  These scenes are relentless though to such a degree that hardly anything else transpires as the day to day butchering becomes increasingly monotonous.  Is it all a disturbing look into one of the 20th centuries darkest military periods?  Assuredly so, but that does not make it a remotely easy view.  For sure that was intended so again, who is to say what to truly make of it?

SCHRAMM
(1993)
Dir - Jörg Buttgereit
Overall: MEH

Once again going above and beyond the call of making his audience feel as uncomfortable as possible, Jörg Buttgereit's Schramm can accurately be described as the opposite of fun.  A guy repeatedly hammers nails into his own foreskin, gets his eyeball surgically removed, and fucks a plastic torso and then cleans his cum out of it.  Plus there is like a weird, hairy vagina goblin or something that occasionally pops up.  The film creates such a consistently disgusting mood that even a scenes where people are eating normal food in a normal restaurant or painting their walls in their underwear both come off as similarly repulsive.  Coming from the man behind the NEKRomantik series, none of this should be the least bit surprising and there is a twisted kind of admiration one can have by Buttgereit's due diligence to bypass taboos and challenge the viewer.  The film does have some eerie images and an interesting, hallucinogenic quality to it and there are plenty of other movies that unfortunately go much farther than Schramm in a much less artful way.  On this note, it is not like it deserves to be banished from the face of humanity, (cough, A Serbian Film, cough).  Still though, one would rather do almost anything than watch a serial killer be a disgusting pig for just over an hour.

90's Foreign Horror Part One

A HOLY PLACE
(1990)
Dir - Djordje Kadijevic
Overall: GOOD

The second full-length adaptation of Nikolai Gogol's novella Viy was from Ygoslavian filmmaker Djordje Kadijevic who had previously made what is considered the first Serbian horror film Leptirica, (The She-Butterfly) in 1973.  A Holy Place, (Sveto mesto), follows the same basic premise as the original story and the famed, superb 1967 Russian movie by Konstantin Yershov and Georgi Kropachyov, (which was likewise the first horror film released in its own country, being Soviet-era USSR).  The humor and visually dazzling, supernatural set pieces are replaced here due to a more somber and disturbing plot element involving a nobleman and his daughter.  The details concerning the family's secrets are wisely alluded to instead of explicitly stated, making them more curiously macabre.  Kadijevic utilizes a retro, Gothic horror style here, void of any kind of frantic editing, gore, or over the top flare, though the momentum is still kept in check.  By being less fairytale-based and leaning more on the erotic/slightly perverse side, it distinguishes itself enough from its deservedly lauded predecessor and is genuinely creepy in its own right

NEKROMANTIK 2
(1991)
Dir - Jörg Buttgereit
Overall: MEH

Round two of two for Jörg Buttgereit's NEKRomantik series is NEKRomantik 2: Die Rückkehr der Liebenden Toten, (The Return of the Loving Dead), another entry mostly concerned with appalling its audience while willingly breaking down the taboos of conventional cinema.  This time, the approach is much more deliberately paced compared to its wildly disturbed subject matter.  The tone set by the musical score, (bringing back the composers from the first film in addition to a small handful more), as well as how drawn-out many of the sequences are whether grotesque or not creates an odd mood that could not be farther from schlock.  Coupled with the fact that the film still goes to outrageous lengths to disturb its audience with more necrophiliac-centered scenes makes for a memorable if not altogether "good" finished product.  Viewed as something emerging post-German reunification and also as an allegory about modern German society preferring to ignore the broad monstrosities of its Nazi era, the themes that Buttgereit is most likely waving a stick at are certainly there.  To be fair though, the movie is in desperate need of an editing trim.  Witnessing a woman saw up a corpse practically in real time, as well as seeing other characters go on dates or just walk around a beach for minutes at a time could easily be minimized to get the whole ordeal gratefully over with.

BODY MELT
(1993)
Dir - Philip Brophy
Overall: WOOF

This splatter trainwreck and, (thankfully), only feature length work from composer/sound designer Philip Brophy is rather pathetic in how completely uninteresting it is.  Intentionally designed around putting as many squishy and repulsive death sequences into its eighty-one minute running time as possible, while also throwing every other creative detail to the wind, it is terribly structured to say the least.  Body Melt seems like something that would be idiot-proof to make with its stock premise of a small town used as guinea pigs for a vitamin supplement that makes everyone who takes it turn into a gooey pile of puss.  There is not a single moment that is even remotely funny though and the movie bounces between so many barely written characters that the embarrassing story becomes almost impressively difficult to follow.  Treating the entire thing like a gross joke is fine as it gives the filmmakers liberty to ignore the asinine questions it raises, most profoundly what on earth is the logical endgame of the cartoon-character level villains who want everyone to take their wiener and face exploding drugs in the first place?  The viewer is not likely to care anyway and that is because neither do the people making this lazy, humorless gore-fest.

90's Asian Horror Part Four

964 PINOCCHIO
(1991)
Dir - Shozin Fukui
Overall: WOOF

It would be nice to well, say something nice about Shozin Fukui's cyberpunk fever dream 964 Pinocchio, (aka Screams of Blasphemy), but besides some mere optically striking images, it is a pretentious, bafflinlgy annoying nightmare.  To say it is a bit much to watch every single character frantically spaz-out and scream in just about every scene that they are in while generally being covered in garbage or eating puke is but one of the things that makes this movie unwatchable.  The other, perhaps even more detrimental aspect are the filmmaking 101 rules that Fukui routinely ignores.  Whether it is simple and often unnecessary establishing shots or sequences of people running around while yelling, they just keep going and going and going to such an extent that eyes will be rolling and watches will be checked by the viewer.  Other sequences are shot so poorly that the screen is literally pitch black while who knows what is going on, again accompanied by more screaming and yelling.  Sure it all ends with a cyborg putting on a giant rock head and saying how good it feels, but by that point the movie has desensitized you so much to its own weirdness and by its own amateurish execution that you will be eternally grateful the credits immediately roll afterwards.

ORGAN
(1996)
Dir - Kei Fujiwara
Overall: WOOF

This unfocused, incomprehensible mess was the first of to date two movies that Kei Fujiwara directed solo, having previously collaborated with and stared in Shinya Tsukamoto's infamous and celebrated Tetsuo: The Iron Man.  Bizarre in a relatively different context from the frequently challenging work of Tsukamoto, whatever the hell is going on in Organ, (Orugan), or what type of horror movie Fujiwara was even trying to make in the first place cannot be logically deciphered.  From frame one to frame last, the film's plot is horribly conveyed.  Unwritten characters weave in and out of almost exclusively bloody and gore-drenched set pieces while frequently writhing in pain as they stab, shoot, and wail on each other when they are not being mutilated or turned into literal vegetables or something.  There are many other disgusting moments aside from these that just seem to be there to at least give the viewer something to be repulsed by since everything else that is happening can scarcely be followed.  The fact that two of the characters are twins and one of them only narrates the movie at the very beginning before turning into a stumbling, drugged-out scumbag who is still supposed to be some sort of "good guy" twenty minutes in does not help in keeping anything together.  Good luck to all who give it a try and have the stomach for all the relentless blood and guts.

BIO ZOMBIE
(1998)
Dir - Wilson Yip
Overall: GOOD

Pure silliness abounds in Wilson Yip's Bio Zombie, a late 90s, Generation X horror comedy that overcomes its highly derivative premise by being consistently funny with a series of memorable characters.  Intentionally styled after a videogame in some parts with on screen text and a hilarious scene where everyone poses with their battle stats popping up, yes it is a bunch of people trapped in a mall who cannot call for help.  Their cars also do not start because horror movies, plus more than a few moments succumb to plot holes yet it embraces its own goofiness every step of the way.  It might seem odd when characters act like macho jagoffs one second, then act like cowards the next, then talk to law enforcement officers like they have no authority whatsoever, then have bonding conversations with them a moment later, and it all adds to the quirkiness.  Many of the death scenes are actually kind of potent and it is impressive how the film gradually shifts our sympathies around from character to character.  If it sounds like a big ball of chaos, that is an accurate assumption.  Yet because the tone stays consistent and fairly resembles Peter Jackson's masterpiece Braindead, (even if the gore here is astronomically toned-down in comparison of course), it would be dishonest to say that it is not a lot of fun.

90's Asian Horror Part Three

DR. LAMB
(1992)
Dir - Danny Lee
Overall: MEH

There is very little if anything at all to recommend concerning Danny Lee's serial killer exploitation film Dr. Lamb.  Inspired by the escapades of Lam Kor-wan, (one of Hong Kong's two known serial killers who was a taxi driver that murdered a number of sex workers before being caught in the early 80s), the movie pretty much just lets us witness such heinous acts while people scream in a police station.  It is full of unwholesome set pieces, (several of which are played for laughs, like a severed breast saved in a jar that ends up getting tossed around a crime scene), and it pretty much ends after we have witnessed enough of them.  The killer initially remains quiet, an awful lot of cops yell at him and hit him, then he confesses so the sleaziness can take center stage as we see him murder, rape, and mutilate women in flashback.  It is utterly void of suspense, has no character development, and is tediously plotted, furthermore offering no insight into the killer's deranged behavior aside from, "he was always creepy, even as a kid".  Dr. Lamb remains somewhat noteworthy and is one of several commercially successful true crime films produced in the country at the time, so there does seem to be an audience for such shamelessly tasteless fare.

SPLATTER: NAKED BLOOD
(1996)
Dir - Hisayasu Satō
Overall: MEH

As a piece of squeamish body horror, exploitation pinku eiga filmmaker Hisayasu Satō's Splatter: Naked Blood, (Megyaku Naked Blood), at least delivers its disturbing set pieces most memorably.  The film is infamous for how a series of victims of an experimental drug euphorically begin to mutilate themselves.  Watching them do this is enough to make most people bury their eyes and tell whoever they are watching it with to let them know when it is all over.  Though the budget appears to be rather meager and the digital effects are poor, Satō makes the most out of such disgusting moments.  Aside from just the practical effects which are adequate, the very deliberate and tranquil pacing of the most alarming scenes goes a long way.  This ends up being a double-edged sword though since the movie is ultimately way too slow, especially during the first half.  The film loses most interest in what is happening long before the grotesque and shocking stuff actually erupts.  Much of it does become quite hypnotically bizarre though so depending on the viewer, it may be adequately surreal to keep one engaged.  Still, the moments that are difficult to stomach are unflinching and frequent, so coupled with the slagging beginning, it does not quite overcome its flaws.

WHISPERING CORRIDORS
(1998)
Dir - Park Ki-hyung
Overall: MEH

The first in the Whispering Corridors franchise, (each entry of which was unrelated to each other), was one of the most successful horror movies to emerge in South Korea after the end of the military dictatorship that hugely censored their film industry.  On that note, it uses the very severe, authoritarian educational system of the country as a backdrop for a tragic, high school girl spectre that routinely seeks revenge on the teachers who uphold such cripplingly strict discipline.  The political themes are unmistakable and make for the most interesting parts, but overall the movie is mediocre and rather by the books.  The plot seems convoluted until it is very meticulously spelled out in the last ten or so minutes where the sentimentality might seem a bit too corny for some tastes.  The spooky moments are deliberately cliche which is not necessarily a bad thing, but from a logic angle, it is typical supernatural horror movie nonsense where the ghosts appear and do stuff only when it is creepy to do so, never when it is plausible.  Since the entire movie takes place in an all girls high school, we never see any students return home or interact with their parents and the fact that so many of them including the teachers routinely hang out there at night, (when everyone seems to nonchalantly believe that the place is certainly haunted no less), the number of horror tropes blindly checked off is probably too many.

90's Asian Horror Part Two

A CHINESE GHOST STORY II
(1990)
Dir - Ching Siu-tung
Overall: GOOD

Identically structured as the first A Chinese Ghost Story with most of the cast and creative team returning, the aptly named A Chinese Ghost Story II is a rudimentary sequel that tells a mere variation of the same story while trying to up the circumstances.  Leslie Cheung's Ning Choi San undergoes another arc where he starts at rock bottom, (this time being wrongly imprisoned and nearly executed), and through a series of characters being mistaken for other characters, then reunites with a woman who looks just like the ghostly one that he fell in love with before, whom he now falls in love with again of course.  Plus lots of kung-fu battles that defy the laws of physics, giant demons who make people gooey somehow, and one random musical number that is just as jarring as the one in the previous film.  Funnier and more inventive though, the characters are well-drafted, with actor Wu Ma even getting shoehorned back in and providing the movie with is most potent line "Good deeds fade like the wind.  No matter what you've done, it's soon forgotten".  So, just as this could be its own beginning apart from the entry proceeding it, the characters once again set off anew for another trial of ghost hunting shenanigans at the end of it that will leave the events here as a distant and romantic, supernatural-battling memory.

EBOLA SYNDROME
(1996)
Dir - Herman Yau
Overall: MEH

What stands out the most in Herman Yau's unapologetically exploitative Ebola Syndrome is how pokerfaced the presentation is.  Not once does the film give a knowing impression that it is in on its own ridiculousness, but the level of unwholesome sleaze displayed throughout can only be intentional.  From the opening, vile scene, it is clear that this is not going to be a virus outbreak movie in any conventional sense.  It ends up instead being a depraved look at Anthony Wong's deplorable antagonist who rapes and murders on repeat until going out in a Scarface-worthy manner that perfectly fits his unflinching wickedness.  The film makes a couple of plot mistakes like said main character randomly seeming interested in settling down with a former fling and her kid after he has been nothing but a reckless lunatic for a full hour beforehand.  Also the occasional English dubbing is even worse than it usually gets.  Besides that though, the film works with all of its trash components in place and the very unschlocky tone makes it all seem more horrific than silly, even if it is in actuality much more the latter.  It is still a bit too harsh of a watch to honestly recommend though, with more than several scenes being highly unnecessary for anyone but the most devout connoisseurs of bad taste.

GEMINI
(1999)
Dir - Shinya Tsukamoto
Overall: GOOD

Nearly everything going on in Shinya Tsukamoto's Gemini, (Sōseiji), works on an intriguing level.  This is in part because it is such an unmistakably different movie coming from the filmmaker behind the Tetsuo: The Iron Man series, but also because the director's unpredictable quirks still find their way into something that is otherwise calmly dark and gradual.  There are just as many slow, nearly silent, dread-building moments as there are outright disorienting hand-held camera ones being cut at a hectic pace.  Throw in some perplexing soundtrack choices at times and some characters even breaking into dance routines, and it is clear that Tsukamoto still favors the bizarre in place of conventional, movie-making mannerisms.  Helped by a strong, dual performance from former boy band-turned actor Masahiro Motoki, the story works either in spite of or because of the peculiar presentation as we get more insight through an increasing number of flashbacks about how one can become a monster depending on the circumstances granted them through a problematic class system.  Or that could be more of a secondary concern to just making a weird, clashingly atmospheric horror tale.  In any event, with the strangeness comparatively toned-down, (or at least recalibrated), it is still hard to tell where Tsukamoto is concerned.

90's Asian Horror Part One - All Night Long Series

ALL NIGHT LONG
(1992)
Dir - Katsuya Matsumura
Overall: MEH

The first in a series of to date six films and the debut from writer/director Katsuya Matsumura, the initial All Night Long is a deliberately surreal and unsettling work.  It is also uncompromisingly nihilistic which would not be the liking of most film-goers.  While it is possible that Matsumura was trying to say something profound here about Japan's youth, Generation Xers, or just violence in media as an overall theme, it is a mostly unpleasant and largely laborious ordeal that does the movie too severe of a disservice.  The very gradual pace is a nice shift from the usual MTV frantic cutting it easily could have had, but by taking so much time to establish what his movie could possibly even be about, Matsumura goes too far.  By the time the really nasty stuff happens, it seems more random than inevitable.  With the more torture porn nature then taking over, it leaves the viewer with a lingering, awful feeling and almost the sense of being duped since the long build up merely wielded such a sour experience.  This certainly could have been intentional, but it always comes down to the question of how depressing of a movie does one want to sit through in the first place to warrant its existence.

ALL NIGHT LONG 2
(1995)
Dir - Katsuya Matsumura
Overall: MEH

The second of six installments in Katsuya Matsumura's All Night Long series, (All Night Long 2 a.k.a. Atrocity), continues the filmmaker's fascination with exploring young, suburban teenagers with no adults around who are violently harassed by seemingly the same aged gang members, plus how the tormented inevitably become the tormentors in the end.  Once again, what the film could be trying to offer to the rape-revenge sub-genre besides just highly uncomfortable set pieces is anybody's guess.  The fact that torture porn has an audience at all in the first place is rather curious, but when it is presented in such meagerly budgeted terms like this where everything is brightly lit and has an at best student film/shot on video quality to it, the appeal is even more baffling.  As far as differences from this and the previous entry, there is no time wasted in getting to the horrible stuff, with the whimpish main character being a sadistic pedophile from frame one.  This makes his turn to violence and gleeful abuser more miserably immoral.  If that was the goal to push the series into more nasty and despicable terrain for the sake of it, it certainly does such a thing.  To what end?  Well that depends on who wants to watch people get raped, burned alive, and have their genitals mutilated for seventy-seven minutes.

ALL NIGHT LONG 3
(1996)
Dir - Katsuya Matsumura
Overall: MEH

Narratively speaking, the third All Night Long film, (erroneously dubbed The Final Atrocity even though three more sequels have to date followed), goes a comparatively different path then once again watching a puny loser get bullied to the point of snapping on his torturers.  It is still the usual miserable, vile ordeal though where youths run completely amok and pretty much everyone is as awful as inhumanly possible.  For his role as the highly disturbed, isolated teenager whose fascination with garbage, bugs, and women's menstrual cycles goes into the violent avenues that one would predict, Yûjin Kitagawa is highly effective on screen.  By slowly limping around with a hunched posture that would make Mr. Burns' back look erect, he is the perfect physical embodiment of Katsuya Matsumura's emotionless, lonely, confused, and troubled adolescent whose lack of all adult supervision and guidance has let him gradually excel in the bubbling, human suffering breeding ground that is modern Japan.  It is still a matter of how unenjoyable of a film Matsumura has concocted though.  The rape and murder is as unflinching as ever, (plus we have women getting fed maggots, getting pissed on, and suffocated with their own bloody maxi pads), so for all of the director's nihilistic intentions, this should still be a hard pass for almost any viewer out there.