DEAD DAUGHTERS (2007) stylised supernatural Russian horror

DEAD DAUGHTERS

(2007, Russia, Myortvye docheri)

PAL Russian DVD (Vox Video)

(This review also appears on 24framespersecond...)

Dead Daughters is a recent horror film that’s part of the push to get Russia back into the international market (like Day Watch and Apocalypse Code). That’s not to say that it has surrendered any of its Russian-ness, but been too obviously influenced by Japanese and US horror. Even so, surprise, surprise, the remake rights have already been bought in the US.

Naturally, the template seems to be Ring, with a simple set of supernatural rules, a short deadline, and scary girls with long black hair…

Vera is waiting in her car when a dishevelled stranger jumps in and threatens to hurt her if she doesn’t drive off immediately. He says that he’s being chased by the ghosts of three murdered children who will kill him if he does anything bad. Vera listens to his story but wisely takes the opportunity to dump him. She later tells five friends about the madman’s ghost story, not realising that he died soon after, and the dead daughters are now watching her every move…

Watching Dead Daughters was quite an experience, but eventually a frustrating one. I was initially seduced by the twitchy camerawork and heavily distorted colours, into a bleak nightmarish mood where vengeful ghosts could actually victimise the living. But I was hungry for the story to progress, and didn’t realise that the two-hour movie wasn’t going to deliver any major thrills until near the end.


The simple premise lost momentum for a long while, as a journalist tries to unravel the facts. But his search, and the experiences of ‘the five’, don’t bear fruit in the loooong second act. I later wandered why the premise had been set up at the start not once, but twice – both with disappointing pay-offs. Mood is important, but it felt like hours before the horror kicked in.

The simple rules laid down (eventually) are very clear, but the narrative is hazy as to how each character does something ‘bad’ enough to become a target, or why they were first chosen. All indicators that the producers want horror movie profits, but aren't taking the genre seriously enough to stick to it's own logic.

When the five agree that they will take the curse seriously, there may have been some comedy moments as they avoid doing anything that could at all be considered bad. Like a Jim Carrey movie, they are forced to tell the truth, be nice to colleagues at work, stop smoking… These are either supposed to be funny and aren’t, or supposed to be suspenseful but aren’t.

Besides the similar plot structure, there are direct references to Ring in the form of in-jokes. Ten years on, this is a little late considering there have also been four Scary Movies to do the job better. Samara even gets a name check, (the US version of Sadako) lumped in with some anime references. They must have watched both films.

I’d really rather see some local homegrown ideas, than such derivative stuff. What draws me to Thai and Japanese fantasy is to hear about their legends and beliefs. Fresh meat for horror fans sick of seeing familiar themes rehashed. Dead Daughters even takes it’s climax directly from the first sequel of a well-known US franchise…


I didn’t mind that the entire movie was shot with a constantly darting camera, it’s very well done. Though the ‘crushed’ details of many interior scenes, reduce much of the screen to blackness. This is an electronic process that takes place after the cinematography has wrapped, sometimes even after the editing has finished. We therefore don’t get to see what the camera or the editor saw, because the colours and brightness have been so drastically altered. I was sensing that I couldn’t see all the important information in the frame, to the point that I had no idea how two of the murders took place! The stylised look is great, but I’d also like to see what’s going on…

The unsettling, shifting camera sometimes means that we are sharing what the dead daughters are watching. I later realised that I’d recently seen several horrors taking a very similar stylistic approach. Shrooms was jerkily but beautifully shot, with extremely unnatural colours. So was Them, though both those were shot on video, while Dead Daughters benefits from expertly filmed cinematography. Nightmare Detective is still my pick of the wobble-cam bunch, because Tsukamoto is years ahead of the pack as an expert in jerky camera technique and fast-cutting, while still communicating narrative.


Unlike Night and Day Watch, the cast is almost completely made up of trendy twenty-somethings, a similar approach to US horror. It’s difficult to learn about modern Russia through such a distorting lens as this film, but there seemed to be satire and, if I read it right, comedy at the expense of the characters. All good-looking youngsters, with new capitalist jobs, like I.T., logo design, rock star, estate agent… They were all into fervent consumerism, laptops, grungy designer clothes... Indeed, we first see them surrounded by a room ridiculously full of litter from an evening in.

Where shops selling consumer goods in Soviet Russia were once only open to tourists, new Russia now has more of a disposable consumer society. Like the new Thai slasher movies, these mean nouveau riche kids are lined up to die bloody and painful deaths. Is that because the characters appeal to the audience, or are they being killed to appease the have-nots?

Attempts at broader comedy sabotage the well built-up, gloomy mood. There’s a taut scene where one of 'the cursed' visits a psychic. But because she is hypnotised by using the twirling flail of a battery-driven kung-fu hamster, it’s very hard to take seriously.


The swirling, layered soundscape is at its strongest using ethereal guitarwork, reminding me of Harold Budd and Robin Guthrie’s score to Mysterious Skin. But this is intersperesed with some downright awful cheap stock ‘horror’ music phrases that fight the modern mood onscreen.

Dead Daughters is almost very good – its strengths outweigh the many weaknesses. The atmosphere and approach are memorable, and I could probably appreciate the dark humour better on a second viewing. But it could certainly lose a few pounds around the middle.


The Russian DVD has English subtitles, but these are sometimes badly timed – there is often a long subtitle to cover the next three lines of dialogue spoken, rather than one each. There are some spelling mistakes and a few minor mistranslations – but nothing damaging. The picture is well-presented in 2.35 anamorphic letterbox, and there’s a choice of Russian audio mixes – stereo, 5.1 and DTS. There are also some extended behind-the-scenes as extras, but these aren’t subtitled. The DVD is available from Diabolik and DVDigitALL. Perhaps if the remake goes ahead, a US release will follow.

An English language website is still online film...

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BUBBLE FICTION (2007) frothy time-travel comedy

BUBBLE FICTION - BOOM OR BUST

(2007, Japan, Baburu e go!!)

Region 3 Hong Kong DVD (released by Vscape)

This light, likeable comedy contrasts modern Japan with life as it was, all the way back in 1990!

After her mother disappears, Mayumi (a young nightclub hostess - it's more innocent than it sounds) investigates the secret government lab where she used to work, only to discover a time-travelling washing machine (an even more ridiculous concept than Dr Who's telephone box).

Perhaps she can travel back to 1990, find her mother, and prevent the economic boom turning to a bust?

The story keeps the plot twists coming and has fun with the inconveniently designed time machine. It also allows Japan to fantasise about life before their financial bubble burst. I'm guessing that 'Bubble Fantasy' would make more sense as a translation of the title.

Despite the many in-jokes and cameos which will make more sense in Japan, I still found this accessible, and got the gags about mobile phones and changing fashions and standards. Like when Mayumi scandalises party guests in 1990 by performing the latest grinding dance moves.


It's nice to watch Japanese films and be able to recognise more of the actors. Ryoko Hirosue stars as Mayumi. You may have seen this busy actress star as Jean Reno's daughter in the overlooked French/Japanese comedy thriller Wasabi (2001). Co-star Hiroshi Abe (Kidan, Godzilla 2000) appears as a ministerial aide, but in both time frames. I also like Masato Ibu (Godzilla Final Wars, Azumi, Yureru) as Serizawa the finance minister. Abe and Ibu both seem just as comfortable in comedy as in horror, or even samurai drama. Mayumi's mother is played by 80's pop idol Hiroko Yakushimaru, the child star of Sailor Suit and Machine Gun (1981).

Ambitious special effects are used in some shots to recreate street scenes of 1990 Tokyo, rather than relying on secondhand footage.

Bubble Fiction barely qualifies as sci-fi, but it's a snappy comedy, especially enjoyable for Japanophiles.


On DVD there are English subtitles on the Hong Kong release (available from HK Flix), and the Japanese (from YesAsia).

The trailer is currently on YouTube.

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THE DOLL MASTER (2004) - mainstream Korean horror

THE DOLL MASTER
(2004, South Korea, IMDB: Inhyeongsa)

Region 3 NTSC Hong Kong DVD (from Winson Entertainment)

Not all Korean horrors are gloomy, extreme, perplexing and non-linear. This is a good-looking mainstream horror full of good-looking actors. My only reservation is that while it doesn’t pull its punches, it should have been much, much creepier…

Plotwise, if Stuart Gordon had made Dolls (1987) in South East Asia, he’d probably have ended up with something very similar to this.

It's also surprising that nothing similar has been made in Japan, where doll mania is regularly the rage. Life-size adult dolls with full wardrobes are on sale as companionship surrogates, highly sophisticated sex dolls can also be tailor-made, girls dress like dolls, people collect dolls, and then there's the nation's obsession with lifelike robots...


Anyhow, I rewatched The Doll Master because I really liked the premise and the look of the film, and discovered it had more than a little comedy than I remembered, at least to start with, before the body count kicks in.

A group of youngsters are invited to a famous doll-maker’s mansion. (You guessed it, it's up in a forest and everyone's mobiles are out of range.) If they’re lucky, one of them will be honoured with a doll crafted in their image. All of them are relaxed, except for one girl who’s a little too old to be nursing an impeccably dressed doll.


The doll-maker shares his house with a wheelchair-bound sculptress. Together they make incredibly life-like dolls, in all scales. The main hall has a display wall, filled with impeccably dressed tiny mannequins.


Creepier still is the use of full-sized dolls in the furnishing. In each of the guest bedrooms is a figure, one emerging from a wall to hold a mirror, another built into the ceiling to hold the chandelier. You could almost think they were alive… The look of the sets and particularly the hall look impressive and modern, rather than the traditional gothic.

Hae-mi also keeps seeing a girl in red dress running around the grounds. What she hasn't seen is the prologue, which introduced us to a man who fell in love with a doll, and murdered his wife just so he could be with it all the time. He was strung up for his crime before the titles rolled.


The Scooby Doo cast of characters are amusing but not overdone. There’s enough twists in the story, even a little gore, but not nearly enough scares considering how creepy dolls should be. Perhaps it’s more frightening for those who can’t stand dolls.

Actress Yu-Mi Kim as Hae-Mi particularly impressed me with her prolonged and sustained level of realistic hysteria! She was previously a star in another South Korean horror hit, Phone.


The Doll Master is currently available in Hong Kong, with 5.1 Korean sound and good English subs as well as the Chinese language options. It’s also out on DVD in the UK, but the US release is now going out of print and harder to track down.

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NIGHTMARE DETECTIVE (2006) a Tsukamoto classic

NIGHTMARE DETECTIVE
(2006, Japan, on IMDB as Akumu Tantei)

Region 2 PAL Italian DVD (RaroVideo)

The films of director Shinya Tsukamoto are always interesting but usually challenging. His two films of Tetsuo the Iron Man were extreme and disorientating, Haze was short and experimental, Hiruko the Goblin and Gemini bizarre and surreal.

Nightmare Detective appears to be his most mainstream, high profile project. A short plot summary looks accessible enough - a psychic who can enter other people's dreams doing battle with a nightmare killer. This sounds familiar, in the vein of the many Elm Streets, but appearances can be deceptive...

Detective Keiko Kirishima (played by Hitomi) arrives on the scene of a suicide, but is suspicious that it's not as it appears. When the case is linked to another violent and bloody death, her colleagues are astonished when she insists that it’s not only a murder case, but also in need of a psychic to solve it.

But her contact, a Nightmare Detective, is a tortured suicidal soul who only works for his friends. He hates diving into peoples dreams for mere money. But when the unseen, ferocious and terrifying killer claims more victims, all of the detectives find themselves in danger.

The result is a dark, disorientating descent into a world of suicide and psychosis.


The cast are excellent. Although Ryuhei Matsuda has the title role, the majority of the film is shouldered by Hitomi, giving an astonishing peformance given this is only her second film. Actually, both characters could be called the Nightmare Detective of the title, one in the police force, one in dreamland.

Youthful-looking Matsuda attracts many difficult roles, like his first in Gohatto, though he recently had a welcome break from angst in the comedy Otakus in Love.

I failed to recognise Masanobu Ando as Detective Wakamiya. He was enjoyable as the star of the Red Shadow remake, one of the many schoolboy victims in Battle Royale, and is in the soon-to-be-cult-classic Sakuran.

Tsukamoto, the writer/director also appears in the film. Is there anything he can’t do?


For the many nightmare scenes, the Hollywood answer would be to build dreamscapes from scratch on soundstages, like they did for The Cell. Instead, beautifully crisp location photography uses the skyscrapers of the business district of Shinjuku, together with underwater footage, to evoke a disorientating unreal world bathed in blue.

The ‘Tetsuo style’ of camera shake and machine-gun editing was too much for the entire length of a feature film, but is aptly used here for the frightening instances when the killer attacks in a frenzy. Anyone at all can wave a camera around and edit fast, but Tsukamoto has perfected the method, enabling the viewer to still follow the action.

This is an ambitious and involving experience. Though I was a little disorientated towards the climax, when I started to lose track of the rules of the dream logic. I was even wandering at one point if the story was going to return to the scenario of Haze, his previous project. The ever-present theme of suicide haunts most of the film, and may be too dark for some.


Japan is spoilt for talented directors who can deliver original, stylish, effective horror films on limited budgets. Together with Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Takashi Shimizu, Sion Sono, Higuchinsky... all proved that there's more to J-horror than long black hair.

Thankfully, Nightmare Detective has been a success and a sequel is already well on the way – ironic considering how much the hero hates to use his abilities.

It reaches region 1 US DVD in February. I've got the good-looking Italian DVD, which has decent English subtitles, though the additional interviews haven't. It certainly has far better cover art than the US...

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GEGEGE NO KITARO (2007) the live-action movie

GEGEGE NO KITARO

(2007, Japan)

A disappointing adaption of Japan's much-loved spooky cartoon hero

Japanese region 2 NTSC DVD (Fuji)

This is based on my favourite old anime, that's been running since the 1960's. The stories are jam-packed with Japanese monsters, ghosts, and goblins both old and new. (For more about the many anime series, see my extensive beginner's guide, here.)


Of course I was really looking forward to this new live-action feature film, thinking it might be on the same scale as The Great Yokai War (2005), which also featured some of Kitaro's friends.

Basically, Kitaro (also spelt Kitarou) has returned from the dead (along with his father) as a powerful ghost in the form of a young man, and uses his powers to keep the peace between the human and the spirit worlds.


When a multiple haunting strikes an apartment block, Kitaro investigates and meets teenage Mika and her little brother. Their father has accidentally found a magic stone that could give a gang of shape-shifting foxes unlimited power. Can Kitaro save their father from the greedy foxes, without upsetting the higher echelons of the yokai hierarchy?

There's some exposition for newcomers, but the bizarrest creatures may still confuse... his dad is a huge eyeball with a tiny body, there's a man running around with nine foxtails, a lardy blubber monster, a gigantic straw sandal demon... but really all creatures that are only scary for 5 year olds.

The film is very faithful to the manga and anime stories, except for Kitaro himself. He's now both grey-haired and teenaged (instead of brown-haired and ten years old). I suppose grey hair suits his being 350 years old, but doesn’t remind you at all of his usual appearance. You can also glimpse the actor’s left-eye behind his hair in several scenes - it's supposed to be an empty eye socket.

Pop star Eiji Wentz doesn’t act like Kitaro normally does, far less confidently and brave than his cartoon counterpart. It’s a tough role to fill, but the rest of the cast seem to be more lively. Besides being made old enough to be caught in a love triangle (between Mika and his friend Cat-Girl), he's now a slacker who has to be thrown out of bed in the morning.

Unlike The Great Yokai War, not enough money has been spent on the background monsters. In crowd scenes, like at the yokai nightclub, several extras with inanimate masks are too visible for too long, looking exactly like what they are. The quality and intricacy of the CGI FX is also inconsistent. Some are highly detailed, like the beautiful location composite paintings, but the unrealistic movements of the umbrella monster, set a low benchmark early in the film. It may have been an attempt to be less scary, and even funny/cartoony, but it's shoddy compared to the rest of the film. Especially when compared to the complicated and extensive Rokurokubi FX (the snake-necked woman), and the entrancing vision of the Fox Queen.

Also impressive is the full-size outdoor set of Kitaro’s lakeside house, which is bigger than usual, almost too much of a desirable residence for a poor, homeless boy.

The success of the film is that the regular characters, Kitaro's crew of friends, are faithfully recreated. Yo Oizumi, as the unreliable and smelly Ratman (‘Nezumi Otoko’), delivers a fantastic comedy performance, though he's sadly missing from the second half of the movie. The beautiful Rena Tanaka plays a likeable Cat-Girl, breathing as much into her role as possible, but like in the anime, she's very underused.

The plot elements are all familiar from a dozen different old Kitaro stories – a desecrated shrine, greedy humans, quarreling yokai, even a flying ghost train. It succeeds in creating an alternate world, where even the human characters appear to be stylised, carefully made up to look like artist Shigeru Mizuki's original stock characters of salarymen, police detectives and careless businessmen.

But I felt the film kept losing its momentum. The flat direction constantly drops the pace and lost any possible drama. Even the action scenes were short and faltering, providing little more than money shots for the trailer.

I'll probably enjoy it more a second time around. But the good news is that the film was such a hit in Japan, there's now a sequel well on the way. Hopefully this time, they’ll keep all the marvellous actors, lose the umbrella, and pick up the pace.

The Japanese DVD editions (three of them) all have very good English subtitles. I think I saw that the rights have been picked up in the US, but have not heard confirmation of an actual release.

THEM (2006) - French horror filmed in Romania

THEM
(2006, France, aka 'ILS')

On region 3 PAL DVD from Thailand (PMEG)

There haven't been many French horror films until recently. This is one of the 'new wave' of hard-hitting and effective genre movies from France, like Switchblade Romance (aka Haute Tension), The Ordeal (Calvaire) and even Brotherhood of the Wolf. It’s received quite a decent release worldwide, considering it’s a low-budget movie shot on video, and has been reviewed extensively, but I'd like to add the following...


A French couple have settled down in a large remote house on the outskirts of Bucharest, while teaching French in a Romanian high school. Little do they know, there's been a mysterious murder nearby, and at night it’s their turn to be victimised, frightened, then hunted…

The opening scene, of a car breaking down on a forest road, builds nicely to a somewhat cliched climax. The story then starts properly with Clementine (played by Olivia Bonamy, the star of offbeat comedy horror Bloody Mallory) returning home from work. After she goes to bed with her boyfriend, Lucas, the trouble begins. The movie builds atmosphere and panic pretty effectively from this early point in the film, all the way to the climax in a sustained barrage of suspense.

While the menace at first appears to be invisible and supernatural, as it's slowly revealed, the film takes on a different complexion, as much social comment as horror.

Purporting to be inspired by real events, this is most probably a ruse, overused by so many horror films that I now assume that they’re all lying. I can only trace the vaguest of links between the events described here and any actual ones. The viewer is therefore being needlessly encouraged to fear the same easy targets in society that the trashier newspapers also favour. Like any movie, the horror genre can be subversive or establishment – Them is definitely the latter.


While Hostel also chose to portray an actual village (this time in Slovakia) as a well-orchestrated killing machine, Them portrays Romania in a way completely at odds with the true horrors that the country has endured. All while getting a cheaper deal for shooting in Eastern Europe – very cheeky. Nowhere in Europe seems safe now, as even rural Ireland came off far worse in Shrooms, than the deep south did in John Boorman's infamous Deliverance (1972).

Any country is fair game for a horror movie location, but if Them is the only film you see that's been set in Romania, then that could easily shade your opinion of it. It's a very different matter for someone to make a horror film set in their own country. Similarly, this could easily have been shot in Romania while pretending to be in France.

But it’s an expertly made film. Indeed, the directors David Moreau and Xavier Palud have already been whisked to Hollywood to remake the Pang brothers’ classic The Eye. As an experience, I enjoyed Them to the last drop. But like many movies with twisted endings, it’s probably not one that can be enjoyed twice.

I bought this on DVD in Thailand early last year. It suffers from muddy compression in the shadows and a fairly soft picture, but has good English subs. It’s presented in 16:9, whereas elsewhere the film is detailed as being 2.35 widescreen (presumably looking more like the screengrab above). The Thai disc is completely no frills.


Them is also available on region 2 DVD in the UK, and will be released region 1 in the US in February.

Not on DVD: BEN (1972) spawn of the original WILLARD

BEN

(1972, US)

I recently looked at the original rat-attack classic Willard, but unlike the 2004 remake, the 1971 film instantly spawned a sequel.

In the early seventies, movies were slow to get to TV and of course couldn’t be scrutinised on home video. This meant that film-makers making sequels could re-use footage, and flashbacks could be unecessarily long. Ben opens with a hefty recap from the climax of Willard running under the opening titles.

The story then picks up at the moment when the police arrive at Willard’s house. Almost immediately, it’s a different kind of movie – with all the police cars and crowds, this one has scale rather than character-driven claustrophobia. It’s about the police and the city taking on a new type of rat problem – an intelligent rat directing thousands of others…


Ben is big budget but far less even than the first. On the plus side there’s more rat action, special effects on an almost disaster movie level, flame-throwers in the sewers… and an atmospheric motif of crowds of public that gather around accidents, silently watching for glimpses of calamity. They reminded me of pod people from Invasion of the Body Snatchers – emotionless.

The minus side is in the form of… music. Ben, the leader of the rat pack, befriends a young boy down the road from Willard’s house. Danny has a heart condition, a rich imagination and unfortunately a puppet show in his den. He also likes to write songs. These two talents collide in a scene that never works in horror films – a musical interlude where Danny sings as he plays with his puppets. The scene belongs in a live-action Disney film, not a horror. Considering the movie is about rats attacking people, I have no idea what the producers were thinking. It’s like a Disney making a musical sequel to Jaws. Of course, the other song Danny ‘writes’ in the film is a love song about his friend, a rat called Ben. “Ben’s song” wasn’t written by Michael Jackson, but it was his first solo hit and was recorded for this film. It’s probably the music royalties that are preventing this movie from being released on DVD anywhere. Or it could be Danny’s unbearable harmonica solo.


Lee Montgomery plays Danny and bravely copes with multiple rat scenes - he was also very good in a scary horror a few years later, Burnt Offerings. He’s good in this, but not when he’s singing. It’s hard to empathise with his character, especially when he lies to his family and even the police about what he knows. As the rats lair remains elusive, the attacks continue – in beauty salons, supermarkets and the sewers.

Special effects are used to multiply the rats numbers (there’s a horrifying shot of hundreds of them hiding in the walls of Willard’s house), and to protect them from actual harm (like in the scenes where swarms of them are hit by flame-throwers). The effects look OK because of the murkiness of the scenes. Cleverly, most of the action takes place at night, adding to the mood.

Although there are quite a few deaths, it’s not a very violent film, but it preys upon people’s fears of large numbers of rats. If you’re not bothered, then it’s not scary. It's also never clear quite how the rats can bring down truckers and policemen so quickly.

The story then descends into the logistics of pest control, with only Danny and his sister wandering around in the sewer to provide any narrative thread.


I started wondering if there was any message to the movie, the authorities stampeding in, declaring a curfew, and using all their technology to exterminate the enemy. It’s very Hollywood to deliver exciting conflicts and portray both the public’s fears of an epidemic, and the maudlin friendship between a sick little boy and his pet (“I love you, Ben”). But in real life, rats wouldn’t actually behave like this, and controlling them takes brains, not brute force.

For all it’s sentimentality, the finale is quite heart-breaking, certainly for animal lovers, and Michael Jackson’s rendition hits all the right buttons at this moment.

There weren’t any more sequels, but ratty horror soon continued across the Atlantic, when James Herbert published his first horror novel in the UK, The Rats, which lead to many book sequel, all seemingly written for bloodthirsty schoolboys, like I was.

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DEATH RACE 2000 (1975) another cult classic up for a remake

DEATH RACE 2000
(1975, USA)

Finally, a decent DVD release of this bloody black comedy

I thought this would be better known nowadays. But it seems that video games like Carmageddon have stolen its thunder without much respect. Even sitting in the car, I keep hearing passengers making jokes about pedestrians being worth different amounts of ‘points’, without knowing the film that started it all.

Over 30 years ago this was the first adult movie I ever sneaked into. I put on one of my Dad’s jackets to try and look old enough to get in – it worked! Back then, Death Race 2000 was seen as a cash-in on the big-budget Rollerball – another future vision of televised sport that incorporated onscreen murder to satiate the masses and somehow provide an alternative to warfare and civil unrest.

But where Rollerball was quite dry and downbeat, Death Race 2000 delivered sex and violence, while delivering a satirical black comedy with a cheeky anti-violent message!

The film portrays a future where the annual Death Race sends five cars coast-to-coast across America in search of first place or the highest score – points won for pedestrians killed, higher scores for those of least use to the State. Big scores for old folks and babies. Extra points for women!

The cars have blades, missile launchers and teeth, to maximise their killing potential, and are all themed to reflect the cartoony characters of the drivers. WWE meets Wacky Races. Besides a cowgirl (Calamity Jane) and a Nazi (Mathilda the Hun), there’s a Roman hero (Nero), a 1920s gangster (Machine Gun Joe Viterbo) and a sci-fi monster (Frankenstein), the latter a patchwork cyborg pieced together after previous car crashes.

But as soon as the race gets underway, saboteurs try to challenge the world president and bring down the institution of the Death Race. The film is presented by three characters that lampoon both sport and chat show hosts.

The racers continue to knock down the foolhardy citizens who venture onto the streets, while the organisers try and prevent the race itself getting wrecked.


A simple enough premise, but with interweaving stories running around all the competitors, the organisers and the saboteurs. Fast editing includes all the viewpoints and tries not to miss any of the improvisations or any last word from the witty script.

The cinematography for the action scenes is tight, with dynamic wide angles, and cameras bolted onto the cars to keep you in the action. There’s no back projection – the actors simply keep acting while they’re driving. There’s a fantastic wide-angle shot of David Carradine at the wheel while a micro-fighter-plane buzzes low over him in a perfectly symmetrical money shot.

Roger Corman, who produced this at the height of his creative powers, seems to have relaxed his usual tight purse strings on the budget, because there's actually plenty of stuntwork, car wrecks and explosions, without any stock footage. At the time, this film delivered just as much excitement as Hollywood A-movies, without appearing to be cheap.

The bizarre music - a mixture of synths like A Clockwork Orange, and rambling soul guitar solos - dates the film the most, along with the sub-psychedelic paintings of the opening title sequence. But the fast-paced action, humour, pathos and inventiveness of the script should still score a few points nowadays. The sharp satire and tongue-in-cheek atmosphere is set up early on when the director, the late Paul Bartel, cameos as Frankenstein’s mad surgeon.

The cast famously includes a pre-Rocky Sylvester Stallone, then in danger of being typecast as Italian hoodlums. But the star is David Carradine (Kung Fu, Carquake, Kill Bill) as Frankenstein who confidently carries the film. Essential Corman regular Mary Woronov again proves she can fight, act and lose her clothes at the drop of a direction. The film's nude scenes, an integral part of the Corman movie-making formula, still surprises today, now that actors and actresses no longer disrobe unless 'it's integral to the plot'.

According to the new DVD extras, Bartel was aiming to deliver a comedy, but the second unit team amped up enough gore to secure a controversy on the film’s release. Even with an X certificate in England, most of the bloody point-scoring kills were cut.

Home video releases of this film have always looked soft, making an excellent b-movie look far cheaper than it should. Even on DVD the film has only previously been available in 4:3 full frame.


The latest release has finally had a digital widescreen transfer. The film no longer looks like 16mm film via analogue video. The far sharper and brighter image now highlights the richly colourful green paintwork on Frankenstein’s car. The picture looks well-framed in 16:9 widescreen, and the audio is now clear enough for all the dialogue to be heard over the constant sound of revving engines.

This US DVD should be the last time I have to buy this film – I’ve triple dipped for it on DVD now! This new transfer will be on DVD in the UK shortly.

Naturally, there’ll be a remake released this year, with Jason Statham in the driver’s seat. His hard-nosed but humorous touch will make for a different kind of film, but it should be fun, if only Paul Anderson can muster comedy. It’ll be hard to better the original for invention and economy.

Pity it won't be called Death Race 2008.

JUNK (2000) gory Japanese oldschool zombies

JUNK

(2000, Japan, IMDB: Shiryô-gari)

I like the way you move...

Region 2 PAL DVD (Artsmagic)

I love zombie movies, but nowadays find that classic ones are hard to, um, find. I like my zombies slow, creepy, and hungry for the flesh of the living. I'm fed up with zombie comedies (like Bio-Zombie), shot-on-video first-timers, or stuff that fails to remember the rules (like Undead forgetting how to shoot them in the head).

I’ll also include fast-moving zombies as a pet hate, the exception being the Dawn of the Dead remake which I enjoyed. But this 28 Days Later sub-genre should really be put in a Rabid category, not a zombie category. David Cronenberg’s Rabid (1977) visualised a city of humans that had caught rabies and turned into mindless psychopathic animals. An action-packed horror, but still not a zombie movie.

In short, the last slow-moving, staggering, flesh-eating zombie film that I enjoyed was from Japan. There they strictly stick to the George Romero-zombie rules. Their zombie movies are still a mixed bag, but Junk is well-acted, professionally produced and faithfully recaptures the atmosphere of the seventies zombie genre.


It’s given a gangster twist as jewel thieves meet up with the yakuza to trade their stash for cash. Little do they know, the disused factory chosen for the rendezvous was the site of a military experiment that has gone very wrong.

Soon there’s a three-way stand off between the thieves, the gangsters and the living dead…


This is low budget, but at least not shot by first-timers. The film-makers previously made the gangster actioners Score and Score 2. Junk is expertly and energetically put together, with agile, taut photography, and a more than able cast, (apart from the Americans). Like Romero's films, a woman takes centrestage in the battle for survival.

The gory shootouts and zombie dinnertime scenes are on a par with the original Zombie Flesh Eaters and the original Dawn of the Dead. Indeed, many of the early scenes have been recreated from those movies shot-for-shot! For instance the first zombie incident is framed and blocked like the 'banquet scene' from Zombie Flesh Eaters. Further into the film they get creative with some new zombie action. You won’t forget Kyoko, queen of the zombies in a hurry. There's good ensemble zombie acting and make-up, grisly gore, and lively splattery gunfights (albeit where no-one gets hit if they duck).


The opening robbery scene looks a little unimpressive, using one of those little wobbly white vans for the getaway, but the film looks convincing when everyone reaches the abandoned factory. The major drawback in the film are the scenes involving the American military – once again cast members have been recruited for their ability to speak English rather than any acting skills. The actor playing a Japanese scientist also joins in with some particularly cracked English.

Versus may have scored highly with critics, on a similar story premise, but I enjoyed Junk much much more.


The UK DVD is standards converted from NTSC so badly that it looks more like video than film. It's further compromised by a bad aspect ratio conversion (making a full-height anamorphic image out of a letterboxed image), but cropping off the base of the picture it also chops the original Japanese subtitles in half! This DVD also stupidly subtitles all the spoken English.


But any DVD of this is not too easy to find now. The US DVD isn't anamorphic widescreen, but obviously hasn't been standards converted. The US DVD is the best release out there at the moment, until the film is remastered anamorphically. Ironically the UK DVD is the only one still available, and at rather high prices.

I still have no idea what the title refers to! It’s been overused for recent film titles, (there are seven different entries on IMDB), so be careful when you’re DVD-hunting by Google.

Bon appetit!

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