(1982)
Dir - Jean-Pierre Mocky
Overall: MEH
A surreal yet ultimately aimless work from French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Mocky and his first film of the 1980s, (Mocky also stars as one of the two leads), Litan is beautiful to behold yet frustrating as a viewing experience. Taking place throughout a very strange, single day during a Dia de los muertos-styled festival where the entire town of the title is "celebrating" a holiday that is never explained, the bizarre images are front and center from the get-go. Wide-eyed villagers stumble around like zombies, children set off firecrackers with no regard for human safety, insane asylum patients run wild, emotionless doctors perform experiments on people, others dressed in red jackets and silver masks play the same piece of music on endless repeat, and a blue worm-like light attaches itself to anyone who falls into a body of water. What any of it means if any of it indeed means anything is up to how imaginative the audience member is as Mocky and his slew of screenwriters, (five in total), seem hellbent on letting you do all of the work. That said, the on location cinematography is appropriately evocative as the town is drenched in fog, plus the barrage of oddly behaving and decorated people create a mysterious aura that carries the film through its ill-defined narrative.
TILBURY(1987)
Dir - Viðar Víkingsson
Overall:
MEH
Serving as a disgusting, Icelandic version of something from BBC's seminal
A Ghost Story for Christmas omnibus series,
Tilbury
is an alarmingly strange television movie with folkloric roots. The
story focuses on a tilberi or snakkur; an imp summoned by witches to
steal other cow's milk which was first documented in writing in the 17th
century. The film opens with a historical narration of the specifics
concerning the creature who was made from the rib of a human, fills its
stomach with the neighboring milk, and then pukes it up for its mistress
before suckling on a teat in the woman's thigh. Weird stuff to be sure
and it plays out here in plenty of detail, but the movie is gross
besides its depictions of lime green vomit spewing hither and tither as
well as hanging out in chocolate bars. The main human character is a
wimpish, ill-mannered country boy who eats without utensils and garbles
his food in unnecessarily crisp clarity on the soundtrack, plus the
setting is a war-torn Iceland covered in mud and whatnot. Still, there
are several memorable images that are a combination of bizarre and
creepy and this may be the only cinematic work to utilize such a nasty
little monster as its main baddie, so the film achieves its
objective to uniquely unsettle.
THE JITTERS(1989)
Dir - John Fasano
Overall: MEH
A rare, Canadian/Japanese co-production set in Chinatown from everyone's favorite heavy metal horror director John Fasano,
The Jitters is a rightfully forgettable genre mash-up. A comedy at least on paper, the movie plays the traditional jiāngshī of Chinese folklore for laughs, though not in anywhere near as engaging of a fashion as Hong Kong's
Encounters of the Spooky Kind or
Mr. Vampire from earlier in the decade. Some of the problem may be in Sonoko Kondo and Jeff McKay's groan-worthy script that has cheap, moronic jokes stockpiled on top of each other, but the delivery of such material leaves much to be desired as well. When both the bad and good guys are equally annoying and unlikable, plus nobody ever informs the police force as to the repeated amount of douchbag hoodlum activity that is going on, the audience will have a hard time giving a shit about all of their squabbling. Even Jams Hong refuses to take things very seriously, (Though who could blame him?), and he gets to embarrass himself by briefly singing a Bob Dylan song because his character used to be a hippy. So in other words, it is on par with every other awkwardly goofy film that Fasano involved himself with.
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