(1985)
Dir - Shin Sang-ok
Overall: MEH
Remaking a lost film is a commendable act and in this respect, director Shin Sang-ok's Pulgasari, (Bulgasari), does kaiju fans a solid since the 1962 version and alleged first South Korean giant monster movie is no more. More interestingly though is that this was the last film made by Shin during he and his actor wife Choi Eun-hee's six year abduction by Kim Jong II, the couple managing to escape before its release was cancelled by the dictator. Remaining unseen in its entirety for another thirteen years, it was eventually released in Japan, with Toho's special effects team working on it, (also under a form of kidnapping by Kim), as well as stuntman Kenpachiro Satsuma who suited-up as Godzilla during the studio's Heisei era and portrays the title monster here. For a movie that was produced by Kim himself, it is baffling that the villainous overlords of the story's village are comically brutish; torturing, starving, and depriving men, women, and children peasants until little baby Pulgasari rises up as their avenger after being made from a dying blacksmith's rice, a little bit of blood, and getting his first taste of metal by biting a bad guy's sword like a candy bar. Propaganda elements that can be read in the opposite manner than they were intended aside, it is a melodramatic, goofy, reckless, bombastic, and of course eyebrow-raising entry into the genre, but it is also a singular one at that.
(1986)
Dir - Lam Ngai Kai
Overall: MEH
The first crack at horror from cinematographer-turned-director Lam Ngai Kai, The Ghost Snatchers, (Bi gui zhuo), is a goofy affair that takes its cue from the blockbuster Ghostbusters, be it of the more violent and horned-up variety that was in keeping with Hong Kong exploitation movies. Here, Wong Jin's unfunny shlub that everyone calls "Fatty" (because the 1980s), and his uncle Stanley Fung play falling down security guards in a newly-built luxury skyscraper that just so happens to have been constructed on top of dead Japanese World War II soldiers. Arbitrary supernatural high jinks abound as the two team up with Jin's out-of-his-league girlfriend Joey Land and a savvy and professional exorcist lady Joyce Godenzi, who Fung has the relentless hots for. The humor is lame-brained at best, but innocently juvenile, gross-out, and sexist for its era as the tone is too lighthearted to take seriously. Thankfully, the production design makes fun use out of some practical and imaginative set pieces involving television sets that spout arms and legs and bounce around, colorful otherworldly dimensions, a giant hand that snags people, a stupid furry gremlin puppet that makes our hapless heroes suck at playing tien gow, and some willy-nilly folklore sprinkled about.
(1987)
Dir - Nobuhiko Ôbayashi
Overall: MEH
A whimsical fairy tale with dark implications and a head-scratching tone, The Drifting Classroom, (Hyôryu kyôshitsu), is Nobuhiko Ôbayashi's typically stylized adaptation of Kazuo Umezu's manga of the same name. A tonal mish-mash by design, it bounces between lighthearted kids adventure to surreal nightmare, all with clashing production values and quirky details that are as hilarious as they are confounding. The first minute of the movie finds Yasufumi Hayashi playing who is supposed to be a spoiled and rebellious teenager, yet his form of rambunctious behavior involves fondling and flirting with his mother while being naked right out of the shower. He also pours sand over himself while talking to a girl and sings "Camptown Races" because drugs apparently. We then have some spontaneous musical numbers, wretched ADRed English dialog, (over non-actors who were allegedly just normal local kids), a nude teenager showering with sand, giant worm roaches that run away when you play a piano, everyone nonchalantly excepting that an entire school disappearing into a hole in the ground is a normal time slip occurrence that happens all the time, an adorable sand critter that pees on people to a jolly musical accompaniment, Lord of the Flies-esque power dynamics, Troy Donahue monologuing nonsense with a desert matte painting behind him, and some other stuff. It is definitely a mess, but it is also bizarre enough to maintain one's interest.
No comments:
Post a Comment