ENCHANTING SHADOW (1960) - inspiring A CHINESE GHOST STORY

ENCHANTING SHADOW
(1960, Hong Kong, Ching nu yu hun)

A beautiful film which inspired the internationally famous A Chinese Ghost Story (1987), which in turn revitalised the flying swords genre, as well as many more Hong Kong ghost stories. Recently restored on DVD, the 1960 Shaw Brothers version holds up as a favourable alternative to the better known Tsui Hark remake.

Based on the same source as A Chinese Ghost Story (Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio by Pu Songling, written in the 17th century) it has the same basic structure of a rent collector who can't find a place to stay in a small town, resorting to staying in a deserted temple that the locals say is haunted.


Exploring the grounds, he meets an attractive young woman in the splendid back garden, where she lives with her aunts and grandma. While she is initially annoyed at his nosiness, she starts to fall for the handsome young man. But courting has many strict rules and when she gets too amorous, he's in danger of getting into deep trouble with her family. Worse than that, there's a horrible murder at the temple, and a body has been drained of blood...

Shot completely in a studio, this early example of colour film from Hong Kong rivals its remake. It's a far more sedate version, but is as typical of the early 1960s as A Chinese Ghost Story is of the late 1980s. The characters, the lush sets and costumes, and especially the story are it's strength. There's almost no fighting and a restrained use of special effects, just enough to serve the story, but with enough shock value.


The remake now almost looks more dated, with fast cutting, wide-angle swish pans, OTT wirework, saturated blue lighting and backlit smoke. The special effects have aged too - the skeletons make Army of Darkness look good. Don't get me wrong, it's still a great martial arts comedy, with inventive routines as good as classic Jackie Chan, and the cast look perfect, Leslie Cheung almost as beautiful as Joey Wang...

But if it's a more serious ghost story you want, I'd certainly recommend Enchanting Shadow. It has a relatively slow start, but I was impressed at how gripping it became. It appears to have been influenced by Hammer Horror, that made an international impression at the end of the 1950s, enough to film in Eastman colour and use startling blood and make-up effects.


There's a short documentary about the director Li Hanxiang included on the DVD (pictured at top), thankfully with English subtitles. As well as a trailer, which is so scratchy and faded, it's a reminder of how miraculous the restoration has been of this fifty-year old movie. The packaging states the film is 2.35 widescreen, but after watching it, that must be a typo. It's presented 4:3, which looks correct.

There's another favourable review of Enchanting Shadow here on Illuminated Lantern, and the DVD is available at HK Flix here.


Meanwhile, there are now remastered editions of all three Chinese Ghost Story films, like this Hong Kong DVD boxset available at YesAsia. Tsui Hark also remade the first film as an animation, and 24framespersecond has news that a live-action remake is now in the works.

HAKABA KITARO (2008) - the graveyard origin of GeGeGe No Kitaro

HAKABA KITARO
(2008, Japan, OVA, Graveyard Kitaro)

I've written as much as I can about GeGeGe No Kitaro in this total series guide, which I also keep updated. But while the character is enjoying a revival in Japan, all 400+ episodes of the animes now available on DVD. Creator Shigeru Mizuki has a museum all about his characters, and there's a Kitaro street of statues flourishing as a popular tourist destination in Sakaiminato. But in the west, Kitaro has only recently been represented on home video, by a single DVD release, the first live-action film. We've yet to see any anime, which first appeared back when Scooby Doo was first on TV!

But the animes never fully established exactly who Kitaro is. His origin has remained in the manga, even too scary for Japanese children's TV. Now comes Hakaba Kitaro, a short anime series, shown last year as part of the 40th anniversary of the Gegege anime, which has omitted much of the scarier, ickier side of the early manga stories. Whereas the ghost boy is regularly introduced emerging from a graveyard, like in the TV title sequences, episode 1 of Hakaba Kitaro dares to reveal Kitaro's mum and dad, his ghoulish birth and even the loss of his eye.


The series develops with Kitaro trying to find his place in the world, a young yokai living among humans. He meets Ratman and Catgirl for the first time, both portrayed to extremes, bigger farts and sharper claws respectively. His father, the eyeball (also explained), guides him towards his various powers as he gets used to modern city life, the lower reaches of hell, and angry yokai monsters.

The anime successfully mixes a deliberately retro style with the latest CGI effects. The drawing style reflects Shigeru Mizuki's earliest Kitaro manga. The human characters look angular and realistic - from before the time when he drew them in a rounded, cartoon style. The early Hakaba manga also provide many of the storylines, though the series interweaves these into a long continuing story. The almost primitive Kitaro character starts as a monstrous, hunched, cackling demon, carefree of the troubles of the world and netherworld, unlike the usual conscientious hero.


While there is humour, there's also sadness, shock and horror. The scares are often pitched at a level of near-hysterical terror like a Kazuo Umezu manga. There are more than a few echoes of Hell Girl - perhaps the creators are reminding us that Mizuki did it first, with Kitaro and his other early character Akuma-Kun, (Devil Boy), who also wore a stripy shirt.

I found two DVD releases of the series in Kuala Lumpur, intended for Hong Kong and Malaysia, both cramming the eleven episodes onto a single disc. The English subtitles on both were identical and accurately translated. They are the first translated DVD releases I've seen of any Kitaro anime. But while they looked like official releases, with holograms and carded sleeves, and bought in official video stores, the unreliable performance of the discs indicates otherwise.

But I look forward to a time when this rare scary anime is widely enjoyed as a stand-alone series, or as an introduction to this Japanese phenomenon, like the recent live-action films. I'm hoping that one day the many yokai monsters of these series will be seen outside Japan.

There's an interesting, related article about the series and Kitaro's history here on The Japan times online.

RING (1998) - watch it, I dare you

RING
(1998, Japan, IMDB: Ringu)

Much, much much much, has been written about Ring. But I still don’t meet many people who’ve actually seen it. To honour it’s tenth anniversary, I’m revisiting it. This is after reading the books it was based on, reading the manga it inspired, and seeing the many alternate versions of the story. (More about the Ring phenomenon here). How will a trip down the well stand the test of time?

Ten years on, there’s several Ring movies, lost in a sea of rip-offs in the Asian Cinema and Horror sections. No longer the one and only, the first J-horror film. Many have only seen the American remake. Why see the original?

People easily get drawn in by the premise – a cursed videotape that kills you seven days after you watch it. Sounding like a typical urban legend, this is enough to interest new viewers, as long as they read subtitles (this is where the potential audience branches between the Japanese and American versions). While the video curse is central to the story, it’s also rewardingly complex, and many strands of the plot offer room for discussion. It also presented a new monster and a new horror mythology that didn’t follow the cliches of western horror.


The opening sets up the curse without giving much away. Two teenage girls are at home, the parents are out. They’re talking about a story going round at school about a cursed videotape. One of them jokes that she’s seen it, and when she leaves the room, her friend gets a nasty scare. The scene has a mild pay-off but certainly kicks off the mystery. The unsettling atmosphere mainly generated by the deafening telephone. But the cosy modern setting in a typical home sets the mood. This is a horror film set in the here-and-now – you’re not even safe sitting around watching TV.

The story rapidly gets creepier as Reiko, a journalist, is researching a story about the cursed videotape at the school. She’s investigating the case of two students who were found in a car, both dead from natural causes. She then attends the funeral of her niece, only to discover that all three teenagers coincidentally died at the same time.

As she gets deeper into the mystery, Reiko discovers a weekend hideaway that the teenagers all went to, finds the cursed videotape and watches it. If the curse is to be believed, she only has one week to live. Everything about the case feels like a real threat. She teams up with her ex-husband, Ryuji, to try and beat the curse…

I enjoy every scene in the film, how the mystery is unveiled, how it constantly raises as many new questions as it answers. The curse worsens, getting increasingly more threatening as she gets in deeper. There are a few shock moments, but it’s not long before I start getting the creeps.

A sort of metal squealing sound signals that the curse is spreadind. The background music is tonal and unsettling, rather than musical. The camera only gives away glimpses of ghosts and shadows. Something is nearby, but we can’t see what. The camerawork is very still, always waiting for something bad to happen.

As Reiko watches the cursed videotape, we realise that we’re watching it too. The weird assembly of seemingly unrelated nightmare images, provide more clues for her and Ryuji. Leading them both to the distant Oshima Island, in search of a psychic who could predict volcanic eruptions.

The journey to the island helps reinforce the reality of their situation. Nothing in the whole film looks like a set. It all looks like it was shot on location. Similarly, the video and a key flashback scene really look as if they were really made forty years earlier. It all looks real.

For those who haven’t seen the film, I still can’t spoil it. But keep your eyes on that video - each time you see it, it changes a little. Brrrr.


Ring is a very, very tightly-constructed mystery, a classic ghost story with great hair-raising moments as well as jolts. A complete contrast from the gore we’re wading through at the moment. It’s a testament to the writer, producer and director, that the film improves on the book. The sequels would then feed off both this film and the other books to create several parallel stories riffing on the same themes. A videotape. A well. And a girl called Sadako.

Although influenced by the ghost stories and older horror movies of Japan, the image of a vengeful ghost, a woman in a floor-length white dress with long black hair covering her face, is now a new horror icon. But besides the way she looks, the way she moves is just as scary…

Of course, the first time I watched Ring was the best. Electrifying. Now, it’s still creepy but no longer full of surprises. But it is still very watchable - for the story, the atmosphere, the impeccable acting and meticulous directing. But apart from the centre-stage videotape, the film hasn’t dated at all. It’s a true classic, an essential film to help horror buffs make sense of half the horror films that have been made since, indeed most of the ones to come from the east.

Needless to say, after the worldwide success of the story, Hideo Nakata, the director of Ring has been busy ever since. His other horror stories include Dark Water, Death Note and most recently Kaidan. He directed the American sequel The Ring Two and is currectly lined up for The Ring Three, according to IMDB. His earlier movie ghost stories are interesting, but not scary - Don't Look Up (Ghost Actress) and Curse, Death & Spirit.

Presumably Nanako Matsushima, who played Reiko, wanted to distance herself from horror after this. Hiroyuki Sanada, who played Ryuji, has also kept a high profile rather than a low-budget horror one. He starred in the excellent drama The Twilight Samurai, and has appeared in US films The Last Samurai and Speed Racer.

Ring was initially released by Tartan in the UK with poorly legible subtitles from a weaving, scratched print. It's since been remastered in the UK, but only in a boxset of all three Japanese Ring films, plus Hideo Nakata's non-essential, non-horror, children's film Sleeping Bride. The film is singly available in the US as Ringu, and in a boxset with the two Japanese sequels as Ringu: Anthology of Terror.

I'm currently exploring all of the films in Ring mythology - the overview, and links to other Ring sites and reviews, is all here.

RING - ten years of the J-horror phenomenon

2008 marks the tenth anniversary of the J-horror phenomenon.

OK, it should have really been a little earlier in the year. January 31st, 1998 was when Ring first hit cinemas and became the most successful Japanese horror film. It started off my enthusiasm for Japanese horror films and reignited a love of being frightened. In London, Ring returned for a Halloween run at the ICA cinema, a longtime haven for Japanese cinema.

For me, it should have been the first review on this blog, and not the 350th. The original books about Sadako and the Ring curse have lead to many film and TV adaptions, and they’re still being made. At the moment a third US film is being planned. Ring is simply dormant, waiting to re-emerge...

Ring inspired the name of this blog, the black hole refers to looking down the scary well. I always write about the films in the Black Hole soon after I’ve watched them, and I haven’t rewatched Ring since I began writing here, so its appearance is resultingly overdue.

Back in 1999 my interest in horror films had been overtaken by Japanese monster movies. I’d not had a good scare in ages and actually thought that I’d seen it all and they couldn’t scare me anymore. Sure, movies could still make me jump or wince, but my favourite horror movie thrill is skin-crawling terror. Anyhow, I was in London’s Chinatown scouring the VideoCDs (the predecessor to DVD). It was a cheap option of getting hold of Japanese films and TV without paying $60 a pop for Japanese laserdiscs. They were also more likely to have English subtitles on them.

My first Ring video - a Hong Kong VideoCD

Occasionally I’d find a Godzilla movie, sometimes a good anime, but usually it was episodes of Ultraman (Tiga or Dyna). But this one day, I saw a cover with this huge scary eye peeking through ratty strands of long black hair. Was it a film, TV, rock videos? The writing on it was all in Chinese. I asked the owner of the shop what it was. In cracked English I got “You like scary movies? This very scary. From Japan. Very big. There are three.” A Japanese horror film that already had two sequels and I knew nothing about it? She only had the first two for sale, the third was yet to be released. What I’d found was Ring and Rasen, its first sequel, misleadly labelled as Ring 2.

Free Sadako stickers with the Ring VCD!

I watched it at home, late at night. There were no English subtitles. But the camerawork was spooky, the music was creepy and the climax made my skin crawl with terror. Bingo! A horror movie that actually horrified. So began my long, extensive descent into J-horror.

Watching Rasen, otherwise known as Spiral, I was more clued in on the events of Ring. There wasn’t much about it on the net, nothing in English at first. Like the characters in the film, the more facts that were uncovered, the more horrible the story became.

Ring became a big subject for me, huge. Besides trying to understand what actually happens in the stories, much of the actual horror is implied, it's taken me until now to track down all the different Japanese versions. I've also been trying to keep track of the other scary movies from Japan, earlier horror films, Korean horrors, Thai…

It's since influenced many, many films, but I’d like to look at how the original story of Ring grew - originally filmed many different ways in a short period of time.

It started in 1991. The story of Sadako was first told in three novels by Koji Suzuki, Ring, Spiral and Loop. Thankfully all have now been translated, together with Birthday, a collection of short stories. Like Dracula and Frankenstein, the movies then added to the mythology and assured their success. The many adaptions have mutated the story, much like Chinese whispers or an urban legend.

Before Hideo Nakata’s 1998 runaway hit film, the story had already been made into a TV movie, usually refered to as Ring: Kanzenban (1995), which had been shown in Japan without a hint that the story would later become a success. The cinema version was released in Japanese cinemas in 1998, as a double-bill with Rasen, an adaption of Suzuki’s second book, Spiral. But while Ring became a worldwide phenomenon, Rasen was quickly forgotten, even though it continued the story.

By the time Ring had been released in a few UK cinemas in 2000, there had already been two more Japanese movie sequels, Ring 2 and Ring 0: Birthday, plus a remake in South Korea, Ring Virus (1999). Japan had also made two TV series, loosely based on Ring and Spiral! The UK then got a subtitled DVD release in 2001.

Later still, Gore Verbinski’s remake The Ring was released in the US in 2002. It wasn’t until 2003 that the original Japanese version was officially released on DVD in the US. A five year delay. Hideo Nakata himself directed the US sequel, The Ring Two, and is currently involved in The Ring Three which is reportedly in production now.

Like I said, it’s a big subject. The many interpretations change elements of the story, like Sadako's fate, and who her father is. Other elements remain the same, like the video curse - a subplot so potent, it’s almost become an actual urban legend.


Every element of Ring has been copied by other horror movies, trying to catch similar success. But none of the constituent parts, or even any creative talent, can guarantee a hit. The director doesn’t frighten me with his other ghost movies, Ring 2 being the exception. Having a ghost with long black hair doesn’t make your film a hit – and there’s been dozens of those…


So, I’m going to start reviewing each film and series. One character. 7 films, 25 TV episodes...

RING: KANZENBAN - the TV movie (1995)

RING (1998)
RASEN aka SPIRAL (1998)
RING 2 (1999)
RING 0: BIRTHDAY (2000)

RING – the TV series (1999)
RASEN – the TV series (1999)

RING VIRUS - South Korean remake (1999)

THE RING - US remake (2002)
THE RING 2 - US sequel (2005)



More Sadako info...

The Ring Cycle - an alternate look and another welcome Japan forum.

Very informative, especially about Ring's western horror inspirations - Denis Meikle's marvellous Ring Companion guidebook.

KAIDAN (2007) - old ghost story from Hideo Nakata

KAIDAN
(2007, Japan)

Hideo Nakata is internationally famous for directing Ring (1998). But its huge success has been a tough act to follow. I’ve been entertained but not impressed by his other films. His early ghost stories were interesting for Ring fans (like Ghost Actress/Don't Look Up), but after his Japanese sequel, Ring 2 (1999), he avoided horror for a few years until Dark Water (2002). He’s been to America to direct the US sequel The Ring Two (2005) and IMDB reports he’s in place for The Ring Three in the future. Meanwhile Chaos, Sleeping Bride, and the recent sequel to Death Note, L: Change the World, maintain his success in Japan.

With last year’s Kaidan, Nakata sets himself up for a huge fall by telling a period ghost story. Not only is the mixture of samurai and vengeance demons a genre that was perfected in 1960s Japan, their last great international horror boom, but he's also used a similar name to the best of that genre. Kwaidan (1964), also known as Kaidan, one of the most famous of all Japanese films.

As always, I read very little about this film in advance, and wasn’t even sure whether Nakata had remade any of the stories from the original. I was then thrown by the posters and the DVD cover art, which made this new Kaidan look more like a comedy.

It starts with a storyteller talking to camera - I assumed the character would reappear to link several stories together. But no, this turned out to be one long story. There’s a hurried prologue which flashes back to the origins of a family curse - a sadistic landowner wipes clean his slate by killing a moneylender. These scenes rush through years of events very quickly, before the movie slows to a snail's pace. The long set-up doesn't start paying back until halfway through, when it starts actually being a horror story.


The crux of the curse was reused to death in the earliest Japanese horrors, a disfigured woman taking revenge on a man by possessing his wife. Nakata adds sex and fresh new scares, but they are scarce and not always logical. As the curse continues, many other victims get drawn in, but over the years (it’s a very slow curse) the story starts to drag and even gets repetitive.


There’s as much melodrama as horror, and even a scene more suitable for Seven Samurai. All this effort might have been worthwhile if it looked gorgeous, like the 1964 Kwaidan. The make-up, dresses and scenery all look suitably accurate, but not particularly interesting or eye-catching. Attempts to expand the scale of the visuals with digital FX of townscapes are unconvincing.

Elongating a simple, oft-told ghost story to feature-length, has left me pining for Nakata to only return to horror if he doesn’t combine so many genres in future.

Kaidan is currently available with English subtitles on a Hong Kong DVD release from CN Entertainment (pictured at top).

You're recommended instead to try Kwaidan (1964), currently available in the UK and US.

Update April 2009
Video Watchdog issue 148 has a huge article comparing Nakata's Kaidan to an earlier black and white version of the story.

THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE (1973) - go in, or don't!

THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE(1973, USA)

In the 1970s, writer Richard Matheson set upon the foundations of gothic horror, with a mission to bring them up to date – placing a vampire on modern American streets in the influential The Night Stalker TV movie, and every other classic monster in the series that followed. In Matheson’s earlier novel, I Am Legend, he had vampires who could be explained scientifically rather than supernaturally. In his novel Hell House, he tackled a haunting from two directions, with psychics and scientists…


Four investigators come to “the Mount Everest of haunted houses” in order to solve its mysteries, even though the last attempt meant death for almost all of them. This is a similar plot to The Haunting (1963), which is far more critically acclaimed, but I much prefer Hell House, perhaps because I saw it in the cinema. The two titles are easily confused - Shirley Jackson’s book, The Haunting of Hill House, was shortened to the movie title The Haunting, while Richard Matheson’s novel Hell House had its title lengthened to The Legend of Hell House for the movie adaption. Are we clear?

The Legend of Hell House also beat The Exorcist into the cinema by six months in the US, they both have possessions, bad language and demons with sexual motivations. Hell House is far tamer, however and it’s structure is closer to Spielberg’s Poltergeist, while being far more serious in tone. There’s no comic relief in this old dark house…

One of the team is temporarily possessed, and having a good experienced actress in the role makes Pamela Franklin’s performance an interesting comparison to Linda Blair, who was obviously a newcomer to the movies when she appeared in The Exorcist. Unlike the period costume horror films of the Hammer Studios, here was a British-made film in a modern setting. The devilish plot meant that here was one horror that kept on being re-released as long as movie double-bills survived in the seventies, which is how I got to first see it - in 1976 on a double-bill with The Antichrist an Italian Exorcist riff.

Hell House hits the ground running – there’s a brief set-up, then the team arrive at the house and they’re inside before the titles are over. The building is shrouded in fog (for days on end!). The movie is thick with atmosphere, created by the intense but largely restrained performances, aided by the distorting lens of wide-angle cinematography, and backed by Delia Derbyshire and Brian Hodgson’s electronic soundtrack. This superior accompaniment is more like vibrations than music. The two composers were from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, and in 1963 it was Derbyshire who engineered the first extraordinary Doctor Who theme there, based on Ron Grainer's composition.

Though the reputation of the house is regularly refered to as a being a haven for murder and debauchery (loosely based on the stories about satanist Aleister Crowley), the film suffers by having no physical evidence lying around. Presumably to avoid censorship hassle, the resulting film is almost too tame, but still garnered an 'X' certificate in the UK. It’s creepy, violent, sexually violent, but tastefully pulls its punches. I think it’s still strong enough to please a modern audience. For a stronger version of the story, you'll have to seek out a copy of Matheson's book.

The small cast are marvellous, though Roddy McDowall’s American acting style is far broader than the rest of the cast, who successfully underplay. McDowall was just at the end of his many Planet of the Apes roles. Here he plays the only survivor of the previous incursion into Hell House, twenty years earlier. Another former child actor (her first role was in The Innocents) was the criminally underused Pamela Franklin, who made several cult horror films, like And Soon The Darkness, and then briefly returned to TV roles after the ridiculous The Food of the Gods. Pamela has the toughest part as an over-sensitive medium.


Clive Revill was better known as a comedy actor, as Dirk Bogarde’s sidekick in Modesty Blaise, and as a Russian aristocrat in Billy Wilder’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. Here he excels as the project leader, designer of a machine that he hopes to cure the haunting with. Revill is still working, mainly in voiceovers – one of his famous early offscreen roles being the original Emperor Palpatine’s voice in The Empire Strikes Back. The lovely Gayle Hunnicut plays his wife – her other great horror role was Eye of the Cat.

I think this is easily director John Hough’s best film, over The Watcher in the Woods, and Twins of Evil, though more recently American Gothic (aka Hide and Seek) showed he’d still got it. The mostly ingenious special effects are all in-camera, apart from some eerie optical work for the manifestation of ectoplasm.

20th Century Fox’s DVD widecreen transfer restores the vibrant colour of some of the sets, particularly the sinful deep reds of the bedrooms. It’s never looked better, and there’s a 4.0 audio track too. It's available in the UK and US.

Recently, some of the striking camera compositions were recently plundered and copied for Edgar Wright’s superb pastiche trailer for the Tarantino and Rodriguez’ Grindhouse intermission, for the made-up film Don’t!. A keenly-observed and funny homage.

In 2013 - we visited the house used for the exteriors of Hell House - more photos here...

THE VICTIM (2006) - superior Thai horror

THE VICTIM
(2006, Thailand, Phii khon pen)

This popular Thai horror has just been released on DVD in the US, and a rave review in Video Watchdog prompted me to finally watch my Thai DVD, which was easy enough to follow despite the lack of subtitles.

Bright young Ting helps the police by acting as the victim in murder re-enactments, staged for the press in the hope of gaining further information on the crimes, while adding drama for the press and TV news. But as she researches her roles more thoroughly, Ting begins to connect with the victims, saying a prayer and lighting incense at each murder scene. Unwittingly, she starts to accumulate their unhappy spirits who are waiting for justice to be done...


While The Victim has many startling shock moments and effective creep-outs, the early scares have a tinge of comedy - in line with the popular Thai horror comedies like the Buppah Rahtree films. There's also some successful comedy moments in the non-scary scenes, like when Ting's acting proves so convincing in a reconstruction, that the public pile in to beat up the actor playing her 'murderer'. The scares are still numerous and solid, ranking this as a far scarier and inventive Thai horror film than most, especially the laborious, badly-acted Thai slashers, like the Art of the Devil series. I was also very impressed with the central plot twist, which the publicity cleverly avoids hinting at...

Overall, this is very satisfying, and director, Monthon Arayangkoon, is now forgiven for inflicting the patchy monster movie Garuda (2004) on the world. The Victim is different enough to be set apart from other Eastern horrors, with superior acting and cinematography, and appropriately creepy camera moves subtly enhancing the scares. My only reservation is that some of the more ambitious effects look a little too digital, but maybe that was a budgetary limitation.

The end credits are at pains to show supposed evidence of spirit photography lurking in several shots in the film. The 'making of' documentary takes the phenomenon seriously, interviewing the cast and exploiting the same superstitions as the previous Thai horror hit Shutter (2004).


By the way, is it me or did the grey ghosts and scary posters from The Victim have an influence on the publicity art for the recent US remake of Pulse, with more dark grey hands reaching out of the darkness...

David Kalat's very positive review in Video Watchdog reports that the US DVD (from Tartan) has poorly translated subtitles and, more damagingly, no translations at all for the numerous headlines and signs. This is a shame because The Victim is easily one of the country's scariest offerings.

Instead, I'm considering getting the Korean DVD release, which usually have very good English subtitles. Though when shopping around, buyers should beware of the many other films, from both East and West, that are also called The Victim.

THE NIGHT WALKER (1964) - vintage William Castle

THE NIGHT WALKER
(1964, USA)

Still Not On DVD...
Any horror movie directed by William Castle is worth a look, is only for the outrageous publicity gimmicks that he promised, to get audiences into the theatres. His House on Haunted Hill and 13 Ghosts both warranted recent remakes, his famous gimmicks are still constantly referenced, most extensively in Joe Dante's Matinee (1992). The bizarre claims of the trailers and unique poster campaigns need to be seen beforehand, in order to understand some of the strange events and preoccupations within the stories themselves.

Castle’s movies even riled Hitchcock into making Psycho the shockfest it is - Hitch wanting to outdo Castle at his own game of low-budget horror. Then Castle poached the writer of the original Psycho novel, Robert Bloch, to be his scriptwriter for this creepy tale.

The Night Walker was one of Castle’s last gimmicky flix, but still prepares the audience with a bizarre and unsettling prologue about the power of dreams and nightmares. The other lure was to cast Robert Taylor opposite Barbara Stanwyck, onscreen together for the first time since their divorce.


Stanwyck plays a woman trapped in a unhappy marriage with a blind scientist, played by Hayden Rorke (the psychiatrist in I Dream of Jeannie). After he disappears in a laboratory explosion, Stanwyck thinks that she can still hear him walking around the house, tapping his white cane. When she actually sees him, disfigured from the accident, no one believes her. She moves out immediately, but continues to have strange nightmares, in which she marries a tall dark stranger in a church full of creepy mannequins. She starts to confuse her dreams with reality, doubting if her husband is really dead...


Her confusion actually played tricks on my memory. I saw this as a teenager on TV, and then dreamt about it several times. After a few years, I only remembered the dreams and didn’t realise that my memories were also scenes from the film. It was another ten years before I saw The Night Walker again and discovered where those dreams had started.

Like most of Castle's films, it's carefully shot in black and white - (the lobby cards photos you see here have all been coloured in). While visually and atmospherically very effective, this reminds us that Castle was on a budget and, in some of his films, it also disguised the use of blood, which might have been censored had they been in colour.


Another reason for seeing this, is the fantastic soundtrack by Vic Mizzy, who famously wrote The Addams Family theme tune. The central theme to The Night Walker is superbly catchy and harpsichordy, though it also effectively evokes an atmosphere of dreaminess. I was very pleased when the score was finally released on CD.

Barbara Stanwyck was initially famous as a bad girl in the 1930s (like in the scandalous pre-code Baby Face) then as a leading lady in film noir (Double Indemnity), westerns and adventure films (Titanic, 1953). Her last blast of stardom was as the matriarch of the Dynasty spin-off TV series The Colbys, opposite the late Charlton Heston. Here she has a chance to practice extreme melodrama, as well as trying to sell as many red herrings as possible.

Lloyd Bochner, as her dream lover, was a regular baddie in 1970s TV, making appearances in many classic series from The Twilight Zone to The Man From U.N.C.L.E.. Occasionally he landed a movie like Point Blank or The Dunwich Horror. Later still, he was in The Naked Gun 2½ (shouting out a fantastic in-joke about his Twilight Zone appearance), and using his velvety voice for the character of Mayor Hill in dozens of the 1990s' Batman: The Animated Series.

In 1964, William Castle’s greatest horror film was yet to come. He produced, appeared in, but was talked out of directing Rosemary’s Baby…


The Night Walker isn’t on DVD anywhere, one of the films I'd most like to see available again. The NTSC VHS release is worth seeking out - it’s a good transfer and can easily be enjoyed in its 1.33 presentation. But a DVD release is long overdue, especially considering the director's continuing cult appeal.

OTOSHIMONO (2006) a creepy Japanese GHOST TRAIN

GHOST TRAIN

(2006, Japan, Otoshimono)

Even after 10 years of Asian horror films riffing on the scary elements of the original Ring (1998), I really don't mind yet more ghosts with long black hair, as long as they are scary. Besides, the ghost in this one is wearing a black dress - that's completely different!

Ghost Train delivers the chills, and attempts to add a new dimension of its own, enough to set it apart from the rest. I'm very partial to movies set in subway systems, and I've actually had nightmares about London's Underground stations. This film taps into scares that I didn't feel during horrors filmed down there, like Death Line (1972) or Creep (2004).

Otoshimono has been retitled several ways in other countries, but it's not to be confused with the South Korean 'ghosts on a train' movie, Red Eye.


The story starts in the busy Tokyo subway system, when little Takashi picks up a train pass off a platform, only to be told to "give it back" or he will die. He later tells a schoolfriend Noriko, and her older sister Nana, of the warning from a woman in black. He soon disappears off the face of the Earth, and the train pass re-appears on the platform. This time Noriko unwittingly picks it up...

On the same line, train driver Shunichi sees a bloodless mangled corpse lying on the tracks in the tunnel ahead. But when he stops and looks underneath the train, the body has disappeared. His boss is concerned that he's not only seeing things, but that he keeps making emergency stops. On another subway train, Kaeru gets a cursed bracelet that she can't remove. What is going on?


This story has its roots in the Japanese custom of leaving lost objects precisely where they were lost, so that the owner can find them if they retrace their steps. In Japan, I even heard stories that wallets will be respectfully left alone, wherever they were dropped, until claimed again by their owners.

The creeping camerawork and carefully orchestrated sound mix help keep the film constantly and effortlessly scary, right from the start. Though some of the shock moments are needlessly cranked-up by repeat edits and zoom-ins, for anyone who missed them the first time. But for once, the scares are all for genuine reasons, and not false starts. The pace is kept rolling by the constant intercutting between the parallel hauntings - Nana and the train pass, Kaeru and the bracelet, Shunichi and the train company.

Early in the story, Nana is trying to decide on her higher education and is reading a brochure from the Miskatonic University - a hint at where the story could be heading - a startlingly different ending to other long-haired ghost movies. I even detected a slight trace of the Underground station horror Quatermass and the Pit (1968). Writer/director Takeshi Furusawa previously worked on the influential Kairo (Pulse), but this film is a far more straightforward chiller than anything by Kiyoshi Kurosawa.


The cast are engaging, with Erika Sawajiri (from Shinobi) as Nana, and Chinatsu Wakatsuki (from Ju-rei) as Kaeru. Shun Oguri as Shinuchi the train driver is a familiar face from Azumi, Azumi 2, Takeshi Shimizu's Reincarnation, and (a possible in-joke) the Train Man TV series (a romantic drama about a manga geek defending a 'normal' woman from bullying on the subway).


Ghost Train isn't very gory, and uses a few cliches, but it's an enjoyable story packed with scares, in a setting ripe with possibilities. I watched it on DVD from IVL in Hong Kong, and it's currently available on DVD in the US from ADV.

KAKASHI (2001) - everyone's got a creepy SCARECROW

KAKASHI
(2001, Japan, Scarecrow)

Not as scary as it should have been

Junji Ito’s many horror manga have also inspired the Tomie series and the wonderful Uzumaki, but this film is less well known, and I’ve not had the chance to see his original comic book version either.


In it, Kaoru travels to the remote Kozukata Village high in the mountains. She’s trying to find her brother, who in turn went there looking for his girlfriend, Izumi. Approaching the village, Kaoru turns off the main road, up a dirt-track and through a long and daunting tunnel.

(This is very similar to the start of Spirited Away, and I’m sure that in Japan a tunnel can symbolise a passage to the afterlife.)

Beyond the tunnel is a little farming village nestled in a deep valley. Even though Kaoru is missing a close relative, the local people are unfriendly, unhelpful and obsessed with an upcoming festival. They are all building scarecrows, and planting them around a huge windmill.


Kaoru visits Izumi’s parents, where she think she sees a woman in a red dress, but they warn her to leave immediately or "she won't want to leave". As the local policeman helps her investigate, she discovers that some of these scarecrows are not what they seem...

There’s a long, slow, atmospheric build-up, that's eventful but with no really effective scares for until near the end. Creepy characters in red are more usual in European horror, and there’s also a moment directly lifted from the 1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers. But this is still an unusual piece, reminiscent of, but more successful than, the similarly situated Kidan.

Director Norio Tsuruta went on to direct the third Japanese Ring, Ring 0: Birthday, which I’m very fond of, especially for the humanisation of Sadako’s character. But his more recent Premonition (Yogen) wasn't as successful.


The cast were largely unfamiliar, though the policeman had a familiar face - Yoji Tanaka also appeared as the boy's father in The Great Yokai War and Ju-On: The Grudge.

I watched Kakashi on a Hong Kong DVD (from Universe Video, cover pictured at top), and while it's still not been released in the US or UK, the HK region 3 disc can still be found here on HK Flix, for instance.